


Spellbound

by Dr_Supernova_Dragon_Cat



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, But instant attraction, Comedy, Dirty talking Sandor, Eventual Smut, F/M, Mutual Pining, Opposites Attract, Romance, SanSan are very horny for each other, Slow Burn, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Witchcraft, Witchy Sansa
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:41:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 45,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28615989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Supernova_Dragon_Cat/pseuds/Dr_Supernova_Dragon_Cat
Summary: Brooklyn born and bred, NYPD homicide detective Sandor Clegane often joked that the only way he’d ever leave New York was in a body bag. His chief calls his bluff and details Sandor to some no-name town in Vermont. They need his no-bullshit approach to detective work. The real reason? He’s burnt-out, jaded, and surly.His chief said the change of pace would do him good, but forgot to mention this sleepy town has a strange vibe. It also has Sansa Stark—hometown sweetheart and psychic who owns the metaphysical shop. Sandor doesn’t believe in that shit. What he does believe in—she has legs for days and an ass to match.Only problem? She’s enlisted to help on a cold case. His cold case. Sandor doesn’t work well with others, least of all psychics and certainly not the most gorgeous girl in town who surely bewitched him because why else is it suddenly so hard to focus?Opposites attract with a heavy dose of sexual tension, small town shenanigans, dirty-talking Sandor, witchy woman Sansa, sassy but well-meaning Arya, and mystical matriarch Catelyn who really thinks Sansa should go easy on the new guy in town.Sexy. Funny. Sweet. Smutty. Hot-and-bothered SanSan pine away.
Relationships: Arya Stark & Sansa Stark, Sandor Clegane/Sansa Stark, Stark Family Dynamics - Relationship
Comments: 220
Kudos: 198





	1. Hells Bells

**Author's Note:**

> Happy 2021! I’m so excited to share this story with you! Enjoy! 
> 
> I’ve also hit a milestone with this update—I’ve officially posted 1 million words of SanSan to AO3! Thank you for all your support and here’s to a million more words!

**Brooklyn, New York—NYPD 73** **rd ** **Precinct**

“That bad, eh?” Bronn’s chair squeaked as he swiveled to Sandor who crossed the crowded room. For a man who complained of migraines, he held a strange affinity for that rickety thing.

Sandor dodged his colleagues and barely heard the question over his footfalls against the floorboards. Beneath the matted and coffee-stained carpet, there were wood floors. They creaked and groaned and maybe they’d once been nice, but like everything else in this stinking hellhole, someone tossed a stopgap over what was rotting underneath. What rotted underneath was something once charming now soaked in rat piss and grime.

_What the fuck is he talking about?_

The blood.

Against his own better judgment, Sandor wore a white t-shirt today. What was that saying—you wear a white shirt, and that’s the day you spill your lunch all over it? Same difference, except this wasn’t left-over marinara sauce. Blood stained his shirt in blotches. On the street, he’d rinsed the blood from his arm with this morning’s coffee long since cold. He’d deal with the shirt later.

Summer faded, and crime soared. Nothing new, just too much shit to do. Sandor had only come knocking to ask questions but received a warm welcome with a gun in his face. Just another lovely Wednesday.

The perp socked Sandor’s partner right in the face and broke his nose. Sandor disarmed the guy, but nose bleeds made a huge mess, and this was his only clean shirt. Who the hell had time to do laundry?

It came with the territory. Sandor had come up in Brooklyn’s 78th precinct, a literal walk in the park where he spent his time following up on more seasoned detectives’ leads. In those days, he had a routine—lunch breaks and strolls through Prospect Park to clear his head. He had a life. He made plans. He even had a girlfriend.

All good things eventually end. A victim of his own success, Sandor remembered well the faces of his colleagues when he told them the news—a transfer to the 73rd precinct. He might as well have told them he was packing his bags for Rikers Island. They’d gaped at him with worried looks and grumbled expletives. He probably would’ve fared better at Rikers.

The problem here was that no one wanted to talk. Cops only banged on doors in this neighborhood to serve warrants and make arrests. People didn’t answer their door. That complicated his job. As a detective, he needed loose lips and quick leads. As it stood, there was too much crime and not enough conversation. Bodies piled up in morgues and paperwork appeared on his desk. Rinse, repeat, a slow procession of cases eventually solved through pure luck, sheer will, and long hours.

Sandor navigated the crowded bullpen of desks butted up against each other. They were understaffed but overcrowded. How the hell did that math work? He didn’t know; didn’t really care.

And his desk…

This thing was in utter disarray. He hated that. It drove him insane. Folders busted open and spilled out the tattered pages of cold cases. Coffee-stained papers littered the top. Who the hell knew if those documents were important? Too fucking bad, they got the Folgers treatment anyway. One day, he’d clean it. One day, he’d have the time.

Sandor spotted an anomaly sitting at the center of his desk—a cheap Styrofoam plate that’d probably gathered dust in the break room for years. On top was a sliver of some desiccated baked good that’d likely shatter glass if he hurled it at the window, a tempting prospect.

“What the fuck is this?” Sandor shouted.

The activity only momentarily stopped. Half a dozen sets of dull, bloodshot eyes gaped at him but immediately resumed work. No one had time for self-evident questions.

“Pound cake,” Bronn hollered.

His chair squeaked again. Nothing could inspire homicide like that chair. No wonder people killed each other in droves in this neighborhood—the ever-present cacophony of ear-bleeding sounds originating from this precinct.

Sandor settled his hands on his hips and eyed the man.

“Pound cake,” he repeated and tossed the plate in the trash. “We’re gonna get rats if you leave this shit out.”

Sandor collapsed in his rolling chair. The seat was nothing more than flattened foam. He could feel the metal base through it.

“We already got ‘em,” the new guy cut in.

Sandor couldn’t remember his name. What a place to start. The kid was too bright eyed and bushy tailed, even now, as he gleefully tossed a stress ball in the air with a smarmy grin. How the hell he landed here, Sandor hadn’t the foggiest. The streets were going to chew him up and shit him out.

Sandor cracked a smile and pointed at Bronn. “You hear that? We already got ‘em.”

The other standout pranced by Sandor’s desk—a blonde girl who had no business working in a place like this with knuckle-draggers like him and in a neighborhood this rough. She had a nice ass, though. Sandor watched it sway as she strutted past his desk; not bad and a better view than the barred-up windows offered. He swiveled his chair back in Bronn’s direction and folded his arms over his chest.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Sandor barked when one of Bronn’s brows lifted in perhaps an accusation. He couldn’t quite tell, but the man’s slow smirk was no better.

“You missed your going away party,” Bronn informed with apparent delight.

The man was as close to a friend as Sandor was likely to find around here. Even then, it only meant meeting up for a beer once every other month.

“Oh yeah? Where am I going?” Sandor snorted. “Better be somewhere good if you’re getting me fucking pound cake as a send off and starting the party without me.”

He huffed a laugh, not because it was funny, but he was tired; bone-crushingly tired, and if he didn’t laugh, he’d rage. This seemed the better choice.

The holy trinity sounded behind him—the precinct chief’s limping stride, his door flying open on creaky hinges, and the man’s booming voice that damn near shook the already-crumbling walls.

“Clegane! My office. Now.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” Sandor muttered.

He hopped from his chair, legs already aching. That thing was going to kill him someday. He wouldn’t be done in by a perp looking to off a cop. Nope. That fucking rolling chair was going to snap in half and take him with it, an embarrassing end to a relatively uneventful life. _If only…_

Sandor dipped into the precinct chief’s office but stopped two steps in the door. Dressed in his blues, the bureau chief sat in the corner with a scowl on his face but tipped his head in the warmest greeting Sandor had ever received from the man.

_Shit._

“Chiefs,” Sandor grumbled and took his seat across the desk.

The precinct chief stared at Sandor. Some days the bags beneath his eyes were so pronounced and such a deep purple that he looked like he’d gotten into a bar brawl the night before. Today was one of those days. This man’s soul had departed his body long ago.

“I’ll cut to it,” he said. “We’re detailing you to Stark Fall, Vermont. A family friend is the police chief up there. He needs some help on a couple cold cases and wants an experienced detective to help train their young blood.”

Sandor laughed long and hard. They were fucking with him. First the pound cake and now this.

Stark Fall probably wasn’t even a real place. Vermont itself was like the New England version of a fly-over state; some distant cousin of the Missouris and Iowas of this country, the ones that people confused for one another. Vermont, New Hampshire, upstate New York. It was all the same, and it’d be a cold day in blistering hell before he’d find himself there.

He sidelined his mirth long enough to read the room. Neither man shared in the amusement and not for stony reserve that didn’t let on much. Humor didn’t even stir in their eyes, especially not when they shot one another a look of congruent and surmounting displeasure.

Sandor stared at his badge hanging from the length of ball chain around his neck. He’d hopped around on loan from the Crime Scene Unit, embedding in precincts at the command of the bureau chief. He’d never said no; never had to. No one in their right mind would send him out of Brooklyn, much less New York. It was unheard of. He was born here, raised here, knew the city like the back of his hand. To him, the world didn’t exist outside of New York City.

“I don’t need anymore cold cases and I sure as shit don’t train people.” Sandor’s tone shifted. The somber severity revealed his hand. He’d dig his heels in. He’d refuse. This wasn’t happening.

“We’re not asking you,” the precinct chief begged to differ. This was going to be a fight.

“Look, I’m balls deep in running down these gang hits,” Sandor reasoned and glanced at the bureau chief who sat rigid in the corner. “This shit isn’t letting up. I ain’t leaving. You need me here. Who’d take over my case load? C’mon. It makes no fucking sense.”

Both men bristled at that. Even Sandor knew when to ease off and honor the hierarchy. “With all due respect,” he tacked on the end.

The bureau chief shifted in the chair that crackled with his weight. Sandor knew the man in passing, had met him on a handful of occasions, and talked to him on even fewer. Not a particularly chatty man, he looked poised for verbosity now and apparently here on contingency should Sandor refuse.

“You’re our bureau’s best homicide detective,” the man began, and Sandor normally would’ve called bullshit—there were a lot of good detectives—but he sniffed out the sincerity easily enough and decided to shut the fuck up for once. “But you’re hitting a wall and I think you know it. It happens to all of us. We all get burnt out. We gotta give you a break, otherwise you’re bound to crash and burn and leave altogether. We can’t have that.”

_Damn._

Had it been that obvious? Sandor knew the change in himself. His baseline was never comprised of rainbows and sunshine. He wasn’t like the jovial jackoffs who cantered around the precinct with zippy one-liners and raucous laughter. He kept his head down, did his work, and occasionally mouthed off when the mood struck him.

Perhaps that mood had become the status quo. More often than not, he dragged his exhausted carcass the eight blocks back to the shithole he called home. He sustained himself on takeout and an hour of TV at night. Lights out, up in the morning for a workout, off to work, another day of running down murderous scumbags. On and on, ad nauseam, it was wearing him down.

Sandor raised the white flag with a slow nod and a deep inhale that he released towards the water-stained ceiling tile above him.

“I get no say in where I go?”

The answer was resoundingly no, but it was worth a shot and a bid for Miami, perhaps. San Diego. LA. Somewhere warm. Somewhere with beautiful women and shit to do. Wasn’t that the point? To decompress? To live his life? His chief shook his head with a look that said, _“Nice try. Not a chance.”_ Fair enough. It wasn’t a vacation.

“You get a bonus. Your housing is paid for. You’ll have time to take up some hobbies, slow down, unwind, get a girlfriend.”

A derisive chuckle escaped Sandor at that last bit, a defense mechanism he couldn’t quite shake.

How long had it been? Ten months? Last November, he’d come home to an empty apartment. She’d taken her things. He hadn’t realized how much they’d intermingled their lives until it was all gone.

The little shit had done him in—her shampoo bottles missing in the shower; her shows still populating the DVR; the neighbors asking about her and what their plans were for Thanksgiving as if they were still together.

It was his fault. She’d found herself a man who’d be there when she got home from work; a man who worked a desk job, no mortal danger or late nights worrying if he was okay; a man she could actually have dinner with and could count on for weekend plans.

_Good for her._ And how long had it been since Sandor actually meant it and wished her well? Five months now. It only got easier.

Sandor stared at his hands folded in his lap. “I don’t have hobbies,” he mumbled. “And I don’t need a girlfriend when I’m getting the milk for free.”

“That’s the point.” Across the desk, his chief gave a faint but knowing smile. He’d been there before. The sudden absence of the man’s wedding band hadn’t gone unnoticed around the precinct. “This place will take every minute of time you’re willing to give it and, frankly, you give it more than it deserves.”

_This city will never love you back._

His first partner—some crusty old bastard ten years jaded, but five years from retirement—told him that. Sandor thought he meant the people. He didn’t need accolades. He didn’t even want them. The man meant the job, Sandor realized, not too long ago. Others poured their loyalty into this place like some sort of savings account. They only ended up bankrupt and wounded on the withdrawal.

“How long?” Sandor asked.

He needed a break, but Brooklyn was home, and suddenly the filthy streets and shameless seediness appealed. There was honesty in it.

The chiefs traded glances again, as if that might soften the blow of a large number. “Eighteen months.”

Sandor refused with a sharp shake of the head. “Twelve months. That’s it. Any longer and I walk.”

The bureau chief intervened and lifted his hand as if to wave off this detail like some fucking magic trick.

“We’ll negotiate timelines later.”

Sandor didn’t believe in magic, and he knew this game. He’d seen them play it with others. Eighteen months turns into two years that become three and eventually everyone decides it makes no sense to uproot again and the logical thing is to stay put.

“We’ll negotiate it now,” Sandor insisted. “A year. I mean it. If you’re forcing me to do this, you don’t get to dictate all the terms.”

The precinct chief conceded with a heavy sigh. “Alright, alright. We get it. A year.”

The man popped a Rolaids in his mouth, probably well into his second roll of the day, and pinched the bridge of his nose. Sandor settled in his seat, satisfied for now in calling the bluff. Eighteen months, his ass.

“When do I leave?” He glanced at the calendar on the wall. It wasn’t as if he had much to his name, but as it stood he didn’t even know where the hell Stark Fall, Vermont even was. Time meant letting this soak in.

“You start October 1st.”

Three weeks. He had three weeks to get his arms around this and get his ass to Vermont. Wonderful.

“We’re putting you on paid administrative leave after this week. We’ll split up your case load between Bronn and a few others.”

This part was just a consolation; a shiny distraction of time off after forcing his hand. Sandor rolled his eyes, stood, and quickly made for the door. He didn’t want false platitudes. He didn’t need time off. The sooner he started this shit, the sooner he could get it over with.

“This will be good for you,” his chief hollered after him.

Sandor settled beneath the doorframe. What did the man truly know about him? Everything, it seemed. Work comprised most of Sandor’s life, the overlap leaving no room for much else. He glanced over his shoulder.

“I’ll believe that when I see it. Thanks for the pound cake. I’ll remember it forever.”

* * *

**Stark Fall, Vermont**

_How’re you faring?_

Bronn asked him that in a text message. Did he care? Probably. Did he care enough to dissect the rare wall of text Sandor responded with? Probably not.

It’d come the night Sandor drank himself silly in front of the fireplace of the American Craftsman he rented. The mantle and green subway tiles were original to the house. The landlord had told him that with great pride on move-in day.

“You know I already signed the lease, yeah?” Sandor had responded to what sounded a hell of a lot like a sales pitch.

The man seemed wounded by that. These people had thin skin and weak constitutions. Sandor had felt bad, though, and _that_ didn’t sit well with him.

As it stood, it was the nicest place he’d ever lived, and that included his Grandmother’s Victorian in Tarrytown where Sandor took up residence as a teenager. That place might as well have been the goddamn Buckingham palace for a kid who lived his life in a two-bedroom apartment in Crown Heights.

This place? By comparison, it was the Taj Mahal with its built-in mahogany bookshelves and finely carved bannister. Irony of ironies—Sandor wasn’t much for reading, so those shelves largely sat empty. So too did the spare bedroom overlooking the backyard with its enormous oak tree.

That was the other thing—the trees, so many fucking trees; more than he’d ever seen, and he’d spent time in New Jersey on field trips to the part that earned the Garden State moniker. He’d jogged through Central Park, seen the Catskills, the whole deal. A park was a park was a park, but this place was something else—rolling hills; a whole-ass mountain that people climbed and skied on; and forests thicker than Sandor had ever encountered.

These people lived for the outdoors with their quilted vests and Jeeps with kayaks mounted on the top, all hopped up on high spirits and granola bars. Sandor rolled into town in a vintage black Mustang that’d garnered looks and not the looks of appreciation he was used to getting. He reeked of an out-of-towner, even he knew.

This morning, all those trees provided a punch of color against a gray sky still vibrant in the stratified blue and gold that ran through it. Unearthly gray, Sandor decided. He’d never seen this shade before, the pastel cousin of the gray he was used to; the gray of concrete and high-rises caging him in and what might’ve felt like claustrophobia to some, he interpreted as the city’s forceful embrace.

He liked the mottled gray of those cube-shaped eyesores that looked like buildings plucked from the Soviet Block. He liked the blotchy charcoal of slush-filled streets in the winter and the vaporous graphite of truck exhaust lofting to a patchy gray sky. He could get behind that kind of gritty gray.

This gray? Well, this gray was just pretty. And cold. It was fucking cold, and that was coming from a guy who derided the way New York City veritably roasted some summers. The concrete jungle held onto heat waves like a drunk girl clinging to her cocktail after last call.

Sandor pounded down Main Street in his leather jacket. He’d soon need his wool coat that he usually hauled out after Thanksgiving, not mid-October. Where he normally liked his long hair tied back, the cold bite of frosty mornings meant necessity won and he let it tumble free about his shoulders.

He navigated the cobblestone sidewalks of this charming little town; too charming for its own good. It was a storybook sort of place where no one opted for chain-link fences. Nope. Only Victorian wrought-iron fences for these folks.

While they were at it, the townsfolk all raised up against electric porch lights too because only gaslight lanterns would do—on the fronts of colonial-style homes, streetlights, stores. These people meant business with adorable details—topiaries, expertly trimmed hedges, leaded glass windows on Georgian store fronts. How fucking cute.

In all fairness, the entire scene was gorgeous. Breathtaking. The shit that would make Thomas Kinkade blow his load well before his pants hit the floor. As it stood, Sandor got off on other things, but he wasn’t so jaded that he couldn’t objectively appreciate the appeal. He could, and yet things irked him.

For starters, the people here were nice. Suspiciously nice. The sort of famed friendliness that hides something sinister. If this were a horror movie, that “hey, how ya doin’?” cheerfulness and warm handshakes would disarm idiots who didn’t know better. Sandor had watched his neighbor spend forty-five minutes shooting the breeze with some schmuck walking his dog. Both men were in work attire. Who the fuck wasted forty-five minutes in the morning on small talk?

Just yesterday, he’d stopped in the general store. Apparently, this was the only place in America resistant to the Big Box virus of Walmart and Target. He needed a coffee maker because this wasn’t the kind of town where every block worth its salt boasted a coffee joint. He’d have to make his own, and Sandor eulogized another part of his former ritual—no coffee run in the morning. In his two weeks here, he’d suffered long enough with the instant shit.

The shop owner, Greg, talked his ear off and ultimately forgot why Sandor was there. A futile affair, the shop didn’t have a coffee maker on hand, so the old man hauled out a tatty catalogue with dog-eared pages. Sandor told him not to bother, and he’d order one off Amazon.

Greg had looked at him like he’d grown a dick out of his forehead but suggested in the meantime that Sandor hit up the Crescent Cafe for “the best coffee in the galaxy.” The man had even offered directions, though this town wasn’t big enough to get lost in. Only a moron could accomplish that task.

Dried leaves crushed beneath Sandor’s feet as he neared the coffee shop. He liked the satisfying crunch. A cold breeze nipped at his cheeks and his hands disappeared in his jacket pockets.

He assumed Greg’s quip had been a joke, some hyperbolic recommendation delivered on humor fit for an old man. Amongst the Crescent Cafe’s black painted storefront, the tagline sat in swirling gold letters. Sandor shook his head and pushed through the shop door.

The bright chirp of a bell announced his presence. Three baristas greeted him as if the Queen of England had walked through the door. Sandor’s brow wrinkled, and he merely nodded in response as he fell in line.

A fire roared in a stone fireplace in the corner and those people off to work sipped their coffee from actual mugs as they perused the paper, not a to-go cup in sight. This didn’t bode well for him. Sure, this was the place to be if he were a hipster wanting to talk about microeconomics over a thimble-sized rare roast that only grew near some obscure volcano on an unnamed island in the Pacific.

Or perhaps they filmed Hallmark Christmas movies in here with the twinkle lights all aglow and everyone lounged around the reclaimed wood tables. No, thank you. He didn’t want that. He wanted hot coffee in a Styrofoam cup. The end.

In fact, he was so easy to please and his order so simple, Sandor didn’t even bother to peruse the menu artfully displayed on a chalkboard above the counter. _“Our coffee is out of this world!”_ it said. Sandor scoffed at the kitschy, on-theme claim.

The only thing out of this world here was the ass on the red-head in front of him—shapely and enough to hold on to and God bless this time of year when women wore leggings and knee-high socks. ’Tis the season for asses in yoga pants, except this girl didn’t bother with that. A fitted black dress covered her ass and not much else, but her legs were demurely covered in leggings.

Argyle socks poked out the top of her boots and landed mid-thigh. And damn, she had such nice legs too; nice enough he might not have noticed her hair, except the cinnamon red length fell to the middle of her back in long, lush waves.

Sandor couldn’t hear what she said. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He heard the sweet lilt of her soft voice, but the shape of her body meant she could be holding up the place and demanding that the rotund barista empty the cash register, and Sandor would’ve been utterly useless to stop her. Then again, this chick in hand cuffs may not be the worst thing in the world.

She glanced over her shoulder at him before marching to the other end of the counter to await her order. Jesus Christ, that was a pretty face—big blue eyes; porcelain skin; nice full lips, the kind he’d like to lick and suck and nip and would gladly invite against his mouth, around his dick, and elsewhere if she so pleased.

And perhaps she did. She looked over at him again and now she smiled and did that thing women sometimes did—shyly tucked her hair behind her ear, dropped her eyes, and bit her lip. Sandor smirked to let her know he saw and approached the counter.

The ruddy-cheeked barista puffed a breath and beamed up at Sandor as if he were the lord and savior Jesus Christ himself and not just another customer. Had he looked at Red with The Great Ass this way? He wouldn’t blame the kid whose name was…

Sandor’s eyes dropped to the kid’s name tag. Phil. Moon-face Phil still gawked at Sandor as if he’d never seen someone of Sandor’s build and disposition before. He probably hadn’t.

“What can I get started for you, sir?” Phil yapped and his stubby fingers jabbed at the register.

“Coffee, black,” Sandor grumbled and reached into his back pocket for his wallet. “Please,” he added because this town demanded it.

If he didn’t remember his manners, they’d politely run him out of town in their Patagonia jackets, all while smiling like idiots and talking his ear off about shit he didn’t care about.

Phil’s head tilted. “What kind?”

The chuckle that rumbled from Sandor was born from confusion, but Phil laughed too.

“What do you mean what kind? The hot kind with no milk or sugar.”

Phil had been waiting for this moment. He pointed a grubby finger towards the chalkboard and started from the top.

“We’ve got the Milky Mocha Way—a chocolate treat sure to make your morning. The Supernova Special—sassy yet subtle, sweet at the end. The No Holds Starred—complex and packs a real punch for a wake-me up. The Comet Me, Bro—if you want something daring but satisfying. And my favorite, the Hubble Double Toil and Trouble—a spicy blend with a choco-cherry chip surprise.”

Sandor intervened as Phil gulped a breath. He would’ve kept going. That would’ve been a travesty for all involved.

“You having a stroke or something? Jesus, kid, I don’t know what the fuck you just said.”

The crazy thing—Phil would’ve started all over again; sort of like those people who talk louder to foreigners who don’t speak English, as if volume was the problem and not a language barrier.

Sandor was ready to leave and accept his instant coffee fate, but someone slinked up to his side. A very certain someone who smelled good; earthy and sweet, not like that Bath and Body Works shit that was reminiscent of a long-forgotten Jell-O salad roasting in direct sunlight at a summer barbecue.

Sandor gazed down at her. Sweet little thing, the red head stared up at him with parted lips and flushed cheeks. She might’ve even batted her long, dark lashes at him. Maybe. His eyes discreetly shifted to her cleavage. Very nice. Ten out of ten.

“Hi. Sorry, I overheard,” she said. “The menu isn’t very self-explanatory.”

She laughed and tossed her hair over her shoulder. This was getting interesting.

“Yeah, who you tellin’?” Sandor responded with rough laughter. “Don’t people drink black coffee around here?”

“No one I know of. You might be the first in town.” Her voice had gone sultry on the edges and her smile, while still sweet, was just a little saucy too. Red knew how to flirt. “The Supernova Special is really good,” she suggested. 

Sandor crossed his arms over his chest and turned towards her. Phil would have to wait. Something was happening right now; a new development in an otherwise uneventful two weeks in this boring town.

“Is that right?” Sandor fired back through a broad grin. “I’m gonna hold you to it.”

“Please do.”

The thing was—she said it so politely and cantered off with her boots hitting the floor in a confident stride, all while abandoning Sandor with her last word on the matter.

She wasn’t exactly forward. This wasn’t some ball-busting chick from Brooklyn with seven brothers lurking nearby who’d kick Sandor’s ass for merely glancing in their sister’s direction. He had a sister, though. He could appreciate the sentiment, but no, this wasn’t it.

This girl had grace, right down to the smile she paid the barista who handed off her galaxy-themed coffee in a to-go cup. No ceramic mug for her. Call it kismet, this girl had shit to do too.

“Alright, I’ll do that,” Sandor distractedly mumbled to Phil. Red could lead him astray and Sandor maybe, just maybe, wouldn’t really care because coffee was quickly taking the back seat. “No weird shit in it. Just black coffee.”

“Do you want a Little, Medium, or Big Dipper?” Phil asked. Never had ordering coffee been this complicated.

“Whatever the largest is,” Sandor replied. In his periphery, Red was adding shit to her drink. Was she stalling? 

“Well, that would be the supergiant, but it’s an extra two dollars.” Phil was still smiling. How could someone this irritating still be this chipper? Fucking Phil.

“Yeah, sure, fine,” Sandor waved him off.

Red with a Nice Rack and Sweet Voice was heading for the door. She waved to him on the way out and walked her fine ass outside.

“Here. Keep the change.”

Sandor tossed a bill at Phil. He didn’t even bother to look. It might’ve been a twenty. Who cared? He didn’t. Sandor scooped up his to-go cup and departed the Crescent Cafe. The bell chimed again with his exit, and Sandor regained his cool as he spilled out onto the cobblestone sidewalk.

He glanced both ways. She was heading towards the heart of town where a statue of the town’s founder was prominently displayed—some dude with the last name Stark who Greg had rambled on about. Red with the Gorgeous Face glanced over her shoulder at him and bit her bottom lip.

“You’re off the hook,” Sandor shouted loud enough that she slowed her pace and twirled towards him with a bright smile.

“It’s good,” he added and lifted his coffee cup. He didn’t know if was good or not. He hadn’t even tried it. 

“Darn,” she laughed. She had a pretty laugh, bubbly and genuine. Sandor cracked a smile at that alone. Even from here, he saw how she blushed, or maybe it was just the nip of the morning breeze. “And here I was hoping you’d hold me to it.”

_Damn._

A girl after his own heart—she could dish it out—and yet her lashes fluttered as if embarrassed by her own unabashed contribution to banter. It was only fuel dumped on an already alluring fire, poised to become an inferno if they didn’t play it cool.

“Well, you’re not out of the woods yet,” Sandor added and unlocked his car. He didn’t mind a little danger. 

“See you around,” she replied so sweetly; not presumptuous, though, only as a matter of fact and fact alone because Sandor was left wondering how the hell he hadn’t run into her already when he’d seen the same granola-eating assholes for two weeks straight. This town sure buried its treasures. He’d have to thank Greg for the coffee wisdom.

“Yes, you will,” Sandor muttered to himself as he climbed into his car and fired up the engine.

The coffee was good. Really good, enough to lift his mood and put as much of a pep in his step as he was wont to have. Maybe he’d judged the people here too harshly. He was a cynical bastard after all, and they had women like Red with the Pretty Laugh running around and making him forget what street he needed to take to the police department.

He welcomed the detour because the other thing he hated about this town was the traffic, or really the lack thereof. The thing about traffic and commuting—for most city dwellers that was their downtime. Podcasts, audio books, music—the only time people got to enjoy those things was during a grueling commute.

It was an odd ritual. Everyone complained about traffic and how it depleted the soul, but take that time away from them, and suddenly they’re bitching about a lost opportunity. Sandor was one of those people now. His drive to the station lasted about two songs or one commercial break on the radio. Pathetic.

Time and distance were different here. Three miles translated into five minutes. He knew. He timed it because he had a hard time believing it. In the city, three miles could take forty-five minutes or more. This place was strange, some sort of time vortex. The miles were shorter, but time stretched on longer.

He only had two weekends under his belt in this place, and it felt like he’d stumbled upon a surplus of time. What the hell was he supposed to do with it? For one thing, he was always early for work instead of scrambling in five minutes after his shift started and catching hell on the way to his desk.

The sun just peaked over the distant mountain ridge as Sandor parked next to the old brick building that housed the police station. His new workplace was yet another parallel reality to where he’d been with its gilded gold details, frosted glass, and cherry wood. No floors soaked in rat piss. No bars on the windows. No roach motels in the break room.

It was classy; some throwback to film noir detectives; a place fit for Dick Tracy, fedoras, and trench coats. All he needed was some gorgeous, distressed widow to wander into his lamp-lit office late one night and in need of his service. Maybe Red was a widow. He’d gladly offer more than a few services to her.

Sandor hurried inside the building because his hustle hadn’t yet waned. Up the ornate staircase, he cantered into the department. It was really just one big room save the kitchen area, a supply closet, and the chief’s office.

Chief Manderly was a nice guy; hard-nosed but kind in a genuine way that’s hard to fake. And he was in over his head or so he thought. On Sandor’s first day, the man lamented about the caseload and Sandor had swallowed down the instinct to laugh. No one likes a one-up asshole, so he kept his mouth shut and feigned sympathy. The streets are rough, Sandor had said. He would know. The man seemed to get it then. This shit was a cakewalk.

They had one unsolved murder. One. The rest of the time, the cops in this town issued parking tickets and responded to medical emergencies. Then again, there was the issue of missing hikers who’d gone up the mountain but never came back down. Sandor attributed that to stupidity and nothing else. Chief Manderly wasn’t so convinced.

Sandor didn’t get a corner office, but he got the desk next to the window that overlooked a park. Not bad. He could learn to live with it. What he couldn’t live with was the quiet. It was driving him insane.

The first week here, Sandor woke up in a panic each night and with the sheets all twisted around his legs. He didn’t scare easily, and yet something unnerved him. It crawled under his skin like that feeling that he’d forgotten to do something.

Mildred the secretary had suggested perhaps his place was haunted. Sandor had scoffed at that. Ghosts were nothing more than loud pipes and mice fucking in the walls. He should know, having lived in shit-hole apartment buildings all his life. It wasn’t ghosts. It was the quiet, he realized.

Sirens wailing, garbage trucks rumbling down the street, some drunk guy screaming on the corner, horns blaring, stereos bumping. These were the signs of life, the signal that the world kept spinning. Shit could fall apart in his life and as long as that drunk fuck kept belting out Michael Jackson on the corner, everything was going to be alright.

But here? Here there was no backdrop of activity or baseline of white noise. Nothing. If the city was alive, then this place was a corpse, no pulse to be found. Code blue. It was done. And _that_ was going to drive him fucking crazy. Once Sandor figured it out, he slept with the TV on. Problem solved. He’d suffer the electric bill just to get some decent shut eye.

Sandor crossed the room—the deathly quiet room, nothing but keyboard taps and the sound of Mildred’s knitting needles clacking a way—and collapsed in his chair. His ass met the exquisite padding, no lopsided bumps, or sharp jabs from metal bits. This chair was a welcomed change from Brooklyn. He’d add that to the list of things growing on him in this place. It was a short list.

Mildred glanced at Sandor over her glasses. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” Sandor grumbled from the corner, still slow on the drawl. These people actually greeted each other with full words instead of grunts.

Mildred was a sweet old broad; reminded him of his grandmother. Beneath her soft-spoken demeanor and little cardigan numbers, he sensed she had a wicked sense of humor. She seemed to like him too, enough to take him under her wing as if calling dibs on the new kid.

Besides the patrol officers who wandered in here and there, the department only had two other detectives—one who was well on his way to retirement and all but checked out and a cop pulled off the streets and dropped into detective work. Apparently, it was up to Sandor to train the guy who was probably up to snuff, but detective work wasn’t the kind of thing someone could pick up like macrame. People either had it or they didn’t. Simple as that.

“What’s the good word today, Mildred? Any murders? Mob hits? Damsels in distress?” Sandor japed from the corner and rocked in his seat as he logged into his computer.

Mildred rolled her eyes and glared at him with the ghost of a smile on her wrinkled lips.

“No. You forget you’re not in Kansas anymore, Mr. Big Shot,” she fired back, quick as a whip. She got her cracks in where she could.

“Don’t I know it,” Sandor huffed, a hard thing to forget.

The morning slipped by in an agonizing crawl. Chief had set aside two weeks for Sandor to get caught up on the caseload that took three days to devour forwards and backwards. The pace of business was glacial around here, no sense of urgency. What the fuck was he supposed to do with the rest of his time?

He regaled Mildred with stories of the city sometimes. She’d never been and had no interest, especially not after Sandor’s fond anecdotes of the muck and the mire, murder and mayhem. He shared insights with the New Guy, what’s-his-face. Nathan? Shit. He should know.

The guy was mousy. Sandor busted his chops, all in good fun and just to toughen him up a bit. New Guy Nathan would get it eventually or he wouldn’t and decide that he’d rather cozy up in his patrol vehicle with a book, awaiting a call for someone parked illegally or another sighting of the possibly rabid raccoon that gripped the town last week.

By a half past ten, the sun rose enough that Sandor could feel the warmth of it on the back of his neck. This was about the time he’d wander into the break room for more coffee. They kept this place stocked. He’d seen nothing like it—snacks, coffee, soft drinks. Whatever they wanted. Chief said it was for morale. Morale for what, Sandor didn’t know. Maybe that raccoon taunting law enforcement.

“Mildred, you need anything?” Sandor stood with a stretch and crossed the room in strident steps. The walls faintly shook as he did.

“A million dollars tax free.” Her typical response, Mildred didn’t even lift her eyes from her knitting. 

“You and me both. If I find it, we’ll split it,” Sandor quipped and disappeared into the hall.

Next to the break room was the office door with a bench beside it that sufficed as the waiting area. Sandor fussed with the coffeemaker, not a run-of-the-mill drip machine. Oh no, this was some futuristic contraption that made espresso, foamed milk, and Sandor liked to joke that for the probable price and complexity of it, it better give blow jobs too.

Mildred had shown him the series of buttons to press that would make it spit out regular coffee. With his back to the front door, Sandor jabbed at the buttons and stared at the crown molding as he waited for the machine to do its thing.

The door opened behind him. The sound of heels against the polished wood floor said it was a woman; so too did the delicate way the door closed.

“What can we help you with, sweetheart?” Sandor greeted and retrieved his coffee mug from the machine. “You here to report a crime? Your purse get stolen? Your cat stuck in a tree?”

Sandor popped off the litany of questions and their barely obscured sarcasm as he began to turn around.

“No. My purse is unscathed.”

That voice. That sweet, sultry voice.

How could he forget it? He might’ve but he’d run into her three hours ago and maybe her voice would get lost in the shuffle, but her face—that beautiful face—wouldn’t.

Red with The Incredible Blue Eyes stood in the hall and gripped her purse handles. Sandor’s eyes flicked to her fingers. No ring. He sunk one hand in his pocket and slinked towards her with a smirk.

“And I think the fire department deals with cats in trees,” she laughed and gazed up at him.

Those weren’t just blue eyes. He’d seen blue eyes before. These were something else. This chick was down-right ethereal and not just for how pretty she was but the effortlessly sexy and at-ease way she carried herself; that perfect alchemy of effervescence and charm, coy little glances, and bites to her bottom lip; a sweet smile, but something wicked and daring stirring in her eyes.

“Maybe I moonlight as a firefighter too,” Sandor joked and leaned against the doorframe of the break room.

Her brows lifted, and she smiled again. “A man of ambition. There aren’t too many fires around here, though. You’ll probably get bored.”

Sandor shrugged. “More free time. Guess I’ll have to fill it.” He peered at her over the rim of his mug and spoke before taking a sip. “Any ideas?”

He was pushing it, even he knew. She matched his eyes. He was caught and just when Sandor worried he’d blown it, a cheeky grin danced across her plush lips, perfectly pink and ripe for the taking. Not that he would, but damn if he wouldn’t be fantasizing about it later.

“A few.”

Right as she meandered up to that line of flirtation he’d laid down, the girl broke with bubbling laughter; not the nervous kind that said she was only being nice and would later tell her girlfriends about that creepy dude who hit on her at the police station. He knew this kind of laugh.

“I have an appointment with Chief Manderly. I’m just waiting.”

She motioned to the chief’s door sealed shut. The man liked quiet time in the mornings, as if this place wasn’t quiet enough. Perhaps that was a polite way of responding to how Sandor had shaken this place up with a voice that carried and footfalls that even he knew were loud.

Red Intent to Turn Him On eased towards him a few steps, her face alight with intrigue. “You’re Sandor Clegane, aren’t you?”

Sandor’s mouth erupted in a smile that he did his best to dampen into a smirk. He peeled from the doorframe and matched her step forward.

“Detective Clegane,” he playfully corrected. Though he bid them not to, his eyes swept up and back down her body. What a body it was—curves in all the right places, legs for days, and an ass to match. Life was good with Red around. “I take it news travels around here.”

She wasn’t the first who knew him by name before he even introduced himself. Sandor assumed maybe it was his scars. They weren’t as bad as they used to be but were still a defining feature. So too was his height; hard to miss the only 6’8” dude in a small town where everybody knew everybody else.

Red seemed to admire his height, maybe with the very correct assumption that he was a proportional man. Even better, she didn’t flinch at his scars, mostly just looked intrigued, as if he were a mysterious figure that’d rolled into town, some dirty-talking Phantom of the Opera. Instead of sulking around in the sewers like a tortured soul, he pounded around with heavy strides and usually pissed people off with straight-talk and sarcasm. Whatever. He could be her unlikely Prince Charming, just as long as she kept smiling at him like she was now.

“You’ve made quite the impression in town. I’m Sansa Stark.”

She held out her hand to him, slender fingers, and soft skin. He took her hand in his, the famed first touch. Surely, it couldn’t be the last, right? Not with the way she was still looking at him. Maybe she was just being nice, but women didn’t typically regard him this way; not unless they wanted him to take them home, bend them over, and see to it they didn’t walk right for a few days.

She squeezed his hand. Sansa. Sweet name for a sweet girl. She wouldn’t want to be bent over and railed. He’d have to go easy on her. Fine. Whatever she wanted; he’d happily oblige.

“Nice to meet you,” Sandor rasped. The deepening of his voice was deliberate. Maybe it’d make her wet. That was a lovely thought. “Can I get you anything while you’re waiting, Mrs. Stark?”

Another deliberate move, not all married women wore rings. He had to be sure. After all, he was famed for being thorough in his detective work. It’s not as if he could just turn those instincts off now.

Her eyes narrowed but retained their coquettishness as she peered at him from beneath her lashes.

“It’s miss,” she corrected. Her thumb faintly swept over his fingers as she let go of his hand. “And no, I’m fine, but thank you, Detective.”

Sandor took a step closer, into the gray zone between professionalism and all bets being off. He really did appreciate the color gray.

“You can call me Sandor.” He stared at her mouth long enough that she seemed to notice. 

Sansa licked her bottom lip and drew a deep breath but matched his eyes.

“And you can call me Sansa,” she all but whispered and put some grit on her voice; the way it might sound if she just so happened to find herself naked in his bed one morning and muttering so sweetly in his ear that she wanted to go again. Another lovely thought. He was full of them today.

Manderly’s door opened, and he popped his head out. His eyes slightly widened behind his gold-framed glasses. Good thing Sandor was in the gray zone. He leaned back into strict professionalism and started down the hall.

“See you around then,” Sandor said, but tossed her a look over his shoulder. “Sansa,” he added with a wink.

“Yes, you will,” she replied.

It almost stopped him dead in his tracks. Sandor turned it over in his head, the way she parroted his line from earlier, one he would bet on his grandmother’s grave—God rest her soul—that there was no way in hell Sansa could’ve heard.

An odd coincidence, he decided as Sansa disappeared into the chief’s office. The man shut the door and Sandor returned to his desk. Mildred toiled away on some neon pink and purple scarf.

“That for me?” Sandor barked. “How did you know those are my favorite colors?”

“You joke, but I’m knitting you a scarf next, so you’ll shut up about the cold.” Mildred’s icy eyes landed on Sandor, but her slow smile brought on the thaw.

“I hope so. I’m freezing my nuts off around here.”

Sandor sat at the edge of his desk and faced the bullpen.

“So, what’s her deal?” he tipped his head to the chief’s office but posed his question to Harold, the old bag of bones who crossed off the days until retirement on his wall calendar. “She work here?”

“I’m sure you’d like that,” Mildred jabbed, and her knitting needles stopped. 

“Nah, I don’t shit where I eat.”

It was true. Mostly. He’d had his fun with a girl at the 73rd, but it never went far or ran deep enough to cause problems. 

“Not with that charming attitude,” Mildred chided and rolled her eyes.

When she’d spent her sass, Mildred exchanged a knowing look with Harold and nodded as if ceding to him in who got to reveal some juicy detail. Sandor sat his coffee mug to his desk and crossed his arms over his chest.

“I guess you might call her a consultant of sorts,” Harold informed and rested his folded hands on top of his sizable belly. “We bring her in for certain cases.”

Now, _this_ was a very interesting development. Sandor leaned forward slightly, his interest suddenly piqued.

“No shit? What does she consult on?” 

Mildred and Harold tossed each other another glance that made Sandor feel like the last chump in the room to know some secret. Apparently, he was. Even New Guy Nathan chuckled at Sandor’s expense.

“She’s a psychic,” Mildred said with nonplussed ease, but added a talisman against Sandor’s sarcasm on the end. “A very talented one at that.”

And there it was.

The other shoe hit the proverbial floor with a resounding thud that shook Sandor to his core. Not an easy task. He’d worked with a psychic once, a last-ditch effort to solve a cold case. She’d been a hack, had wasted time and resources, and eventually was arrested for fraud.

“A psychic,” Sandor scoffed, and it went over like a lead balloon that landed in the middle of the bullpen. No one was amused. Sandor shook his head with a sigh and fetched his coffee.

“Jesus, give me a fucking break,” he groused. “You can’t tell me you believe in that woo-woo crap.”

A trio of flat faces gaped at him as if he’d spoken some sort of Stark Fall sacrilege. Any moment, one of them was going to sign the cross over their body and phone the priest.

“Yes. In this town, we do,” Mildred spoke up again. It sounded like a warning and the look she gave matched. “I take it you haven’t heard the history of the Stark family.”

No, he’d heard it. All over town, people threw in trivia about the Stark family. Even around the department, Sandor had heard about the family on whispers too mundane for him to care and easily fading into white noise he had to create for himself—pen clicks, foot taps, humming half the song he heard on his way to work. He chalked it up to a weird obsession with history.

Harold seemed to relish this moment and the look on his face said he was about to school Sandor good and well whether he liked it or not.

“The Starks founded this town in 1714. They settled here based on a vision from their matriarch. She saw Stark Hallow Lake and Dread Pass Mountain and divined it as the spot to settle, something about lay lines and mystical protection for the family.

“Legend has it she scried the coordinates for Stark Square from a black mirror. That was the site of the first Stark homestead. The Starks were true patriots and fought for American independence but didn’t forget their roots back to the Old World.”

Of course. It all made sense now. Sansa Stark, Stark Square, Stark Hallow Lake. These people did their damnedest to make sure no one forgot who founded this place. Hundreds of years later, it was apparently all anyone talked about around here.

“Yeah, but didn’t we all?” Sandor countered because folk flocked to Ellis Island all the time to commemorate their ancestors’ journey to America.

“He means old magic,” Nathan chimed in with smug “who’s the new guy now?” satisfaction. Sandor didn’t peg him as one to buy into this shit.

Sandor stared at Nathan. “Excuse me?”

Mildred responded before Nathan could, but she’d already gone back to knitting.

“The Starks of yore consorted with wolves, read the wind, augured the future. A long tradition of witches and warlocks, they lived relatively unscathed until the Burning Times—that horrific period where even suspicion of witchcraft was a death sentence.

“Their lineage was put to the stake. They had no choice but to flee. The Starks came to this country for religious freedom; freedom to retain their pagan roots without persecution and to practice witchcraft without fear of being found out.”

“And that’s what she does? Witchcraft?” Sandor pressed. His intrigue had taken on a different shape now and had grown in parts.

“Her mother is a river witch from New Orleans,” Harold offered as if Sandor should know what the hell that meant. 

“A river witch,” Sandor repeated with enough incredulity that Mildred released an annoyed sigh and momentarily gave her knitting a break. 

“Mississippi magic. The Stark and Tully marriage made for a powerhouse—Old World magic cultivated for centuries combined with the New Orleans mysticism straight from the deep swamps of the Bayou. Their children all have abilities to some extent, but the Stark sisters, Sansa and Arya, in particular. The sisters own the metaphysical shop in town. They sell crystals, give tarot readings, help those in need.” 

“Witches.” Try as he might, Sandor’s dubiousness could not be tamed. It weighed his words down. “You expect me to believe she’s a witch?”

“A good witch,” Nathan piped up again just in case Sandor got any ideas in his head that this chick was sacrificing puppies at midnight to conjure demons.

As if on cue, the door to the chief’s office opened. Sansa the good witch appeared, all smiles and warm words of departure as she cheerfully waved to the room.

Maybe she was a witch. She sure as shit seemed to cast some sort of spell on Sandor with the way she moved, talked, smiled, and laughed with gleaming enchantment. Goddamn, he’d gladly let her bewitch him. Whatever she wanted.

“Bye everyone!” she chirped, and her eyes landed on him. Sandor abruptly stood from his desk and stared at her. “Nice to meet you, Sandor.”

His name sounded liked heaven on her lips that would taste even better if he had to guess. A very good witch, indeed.

Sandor tipped his head to her, fully mesmerized as he watched her head down the hall and out of the department. He stared at the door with the dull hope that she’d manifest again for something—a missing glove, one last word, the sudden urge to talk to him.

A heavy gaze hit his skin, the distinct pressure of being watched. Sandor looked to Mildred, who cracked a smile and shook her head.

“You got a lot to learn about this town, _sweetheart._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m happy to be back with another multi-chapter fic and this has been a blast to write! I’ve got about 70% of it done already. While I will not be posting on an episodic schedule like Tuesday’s Gone, I will update regularly! 
> 
> There will also be appearances of characters from some of my other stories. You may remember Phil from the infamous Michelin Man scene in Thunderstruck! 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and please let me know what you think in the comments! I always love to hear your thoughts and to connect with you all in the comments!


	2. Small Town Witch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa has suffered one too many bad dates. She wants passion! Spark! Burning desire! What’s a small town witch to do? A love spell? Tarot cards? A trip to the hardware store? 
> 
> Listen, spark happens when we least expect it and who knows where man-about-town Detective Clegane might pop up next? 
> 
> Better hide your flammables and let’s hope the hardware store has a sprinkler system because there's a red-hot incident in aisle three (Sansa’s favorite number). Coincidence? Not in her world of magick and mysticism. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for warm reception to this fic! I’ve added some notes at the end about a couple terms used in this chapter. Enjoy!

“How was the date last night?”

Jeyne’s question came casual. The look she gave did not. She peered at Sansa curiously and rearranged the glass bowls displaying crystals. Jeyne liked the crystals in rainbow order. Arya would mess with her—a pop of red aventurine next to lapis lazuli’s deep blue; mint-colored fluorite next to amethyst’s stratified purple.

It never pissed Jeyne off, though. It gave that girl’s nervous hands something to do, a welcomed distraction on a lazy Sunday like today. The town patronized the shop throughout the week, except on Sundays when the church required their attendance.

“Jeyne, it was awful,” Sansa grumbled and collapsed to her forearms on the glass counter with the tarot cards displayed beneath her.

The Nine of Pentacles taunted her—the image of a fabulously independent woman, garbed in exquisite fabric and out for a sunny afternoon of falconeering. No time for the buffoonery of men or bad dates. What luxury! _Don’t judge me. We can’t all be like you._

“What happened?”

Jeyne looked worried. She always looked worried. This morning, she worried about the drain in the bathroom sink that drip, drip, dripped throughout the night and soaked the toilet paper underneath. The bright side, Sansa pointed out, was it sopped up the water. The danger, Jeyne responded, was black mold, the scourge of humanity.

What happened on the date? More like, what didn’t happen. What didn’t happen was interesting conversation or a spark, not even the suggestion of a spark. In fact, the entire date was the equivalent of those flame-retardant couches at cheap furniture stores. Sansa could’ve dumped kerosene all over it and lit a match, and her wet blanket of a blind date would’ve snuffed it out immediately and derided her about the dangers of open flames. If it wasn’t so pathetic, it might’ve qualified as the seventh wonder of the world—that she’d endured such tedium and underhanded condescension.

“He was both high-strung and neurotic, but also painfully subdued at the same time. Like a chihuahua on Valium.”

Jeyne’s eyes went wide, and a pale hand flew to her mouth. “Oh God. This was a blind date, right?”

“Yes. Never again.”

Good thing it was blind. Had she gone in with eyes wide open, Sansa never would’ve agreed to it. Stuffy. He was stuffy and boring too. How was it a respected newspaper columnist had that little to say? He’d had plenty to say about himself, though. The date tanked the moment Sansa tried to make a joke.

_“Are you reading me your resume?”_ she’d laughed, a jab at the guy’s odd recitation of his educational history.

He was as dry as the stale bread sticks Sansa inhaled before their entrees came out. He was as tasteless, too. His cable-knit sweater was teal, his corduroys hunter green, his shoes black. If that was his date outfit, then what did his everyday attire look like?

That had been a rude thought, so Sansa had smiled to cast it away and gulped down her wine. He’d commented on that and then asked what she did for a living. He’d heard she was a therapist. Most times, tarot card readings turned into therapy sessions, so it was truth-adjacent, but Sansa had set the record straight.

_“I run a metaphysical shop. You know, crystals, books on witchcraft, sage sticks, divination. I give people tarot card readings. I’m a psychic too.”_

He hadn’t been fond of that. She saw the judgement on the rise and his thin, crusty lips open to make some rude remark, but she intervened.

_“Oh, and I’m a witch. I dance with the devil naked under the full moon. That sort of thing. You know, just a regular girl.”_

He’d asked for the bill then. And there it was. They’d skipped past the spark and the slow burning embers of sexual attraction and fuck-me-now urgency right to a fiery inferno and “oh, the humanity!” blazing destruction that sent the tryst crashing to the ground. Their date had been the Hindenburg of dates—doomed from the start and ultimately self-combusting.

“I’m really sorry,” Jeyne muttered, her soft voice easily lost against the backdrop of instrumental music—flutes and bells meant to relax customers. On slow days, it usually succeeded in nearly putting Sansa to sleep.

“I’m sure he’s out there somewhere,” Sansa replied. 

An ambivalent wish, she sent it to the sky. If it happened, it happened. If it didn’t, it didn’t. She divested herself from the outcome.

Outside, her mother and Arya hustled across the mostly empty street and poured into the shop with bags, namely replacement toilet paper and other essentials for the shop. Arya leaned against the counter and pulled a red lollipop from her mouth. She pointed it at their mom who offloaded her purse and the shopping bag behind the counter. The setting sun spilled through the shop window and lit up her mother’s hair like a flame, well-matched to her yellow coat, autumnal all around. She was such a stylish woman, sleek and classy. The town folk all loved her; as well they should.

“Tell Sansa and Jeyne what you told me.” Arya peered at Sansa from beneath the brim of her black hat.

Sansa long suspected Arya liked to look the part of a witch with black on black on black—nail polish, clothes, shoes, hair—but her sister despised accusations that she was gothic. She wasn’t gothic, just unabashedly leaning into her witchy roots.

A look passed between Arya and their mother— _the look_ ; the one that usually preceded juicy gossip and the hearsay around Main Street. The town was full of it, everyone sticking their noses, hands, and ears in other people’s business.

“What?” Sansa pressed and fiddled with the pencil in her hands. Her worry set in.

What if this was another of her mother’s attempts to set Sansa up, to subject her to yet another blind date with the human equivalent of soggy white bread—sad, offensive, and sloppy?

No. No more set-ups. She was done. She was going to take a page out of the Nine of Pentacles’ book. She’d pick up a fancy hobby and buy herself some new clothes.

“Mom talked to the new guy,” Arya divulged with a saucy smile. She popped the lollipop back into her mouth and waggled her brows.

Sansa perked up, back straightening and features probably lifting all at once as if someone turned on the lights. She didn’t need to ask who. It was all anyone could talk about around town.

“Oh!” she yelped. “I did too last week. I saw him at the police station.”

She’d already told them. Twice, was it? Maybe three times. Enough that Arya called Sansa on it. _“Senile at the ripe old age of twenty-six, are we? You already told us, remember?”_

Arya rolled her eyes. “We know. You’ve told us.”

“The detective, right?” Jeyne cut in and dusted the glass shelves between neat rows of ritual candles.

Jeyne hadn’t seen him yet, only heard about him. The entire town had heard about him before he even arrived. A mysterious, big city stranger appeared in their sleepy little town where nothing all that exciting ever happened. This was the event of the year, hands down. The poor guy probably didn’t even know what he’d be up against; his celebrity status, the out-of-towner come to shake things up in the police department. It was a wonder the mayor didn’t call for a parade.

“He’s from New _Yawk_.” Arya’s head lolled to Jeyne and she imitated his accent with special emphasis.

That accent was unmistakable and oddly appealing. Or perhaps it was just the deep rumble of his voice and the shape of his mouth when he spoke through a perpetual half smile. Even a scowl looked nice on him.

“The one with the scars?” Jeyne asked.

_He’s handsome._

Yes, he had scars and yes, to some people perhaps that might diminish an otherwise masculine face—pronounced brow, sharp cheekbones, angular chin, and a hooked nose that suited his face. No up-turned nose on him. Nope, that just wouldn’t work. Rough, rugged, and brusque—he was sure to shake this town up and probably ruffle some feathers along the way.

_And tall._

God, he was tall and with bulk to match. Sansa had tried not to stare at him, but he filled out a leather jacket and black pants rather nicely, if she did say so herself, and what exactly was the harm in looking?

“Phil told me he’s kind of a dick.”

The corner of Arya’s mouth lifted in a conspiratorial smile. Phil had the constitution of a Ritz cracker—liable to fall to pieces at the slightest pressure and rendered to dust if roughed up. Detective Clegane was well within his rights to point out the absurdity of the Crescent Cafe’s menu and spoke what the town had been thinking for years.

“Oh, he is not!” her mom scolded with gentle laughter and reached around Sansa for her day planner next to the cash register. “He was charming in his own way.”

“Charming?” Arya scoffed and leveled a dubious stare at Sansa. “That’s code for dick. D-I-C-K. Huge.”

_It probably is huge._

Oh God. Here she went again. Mind in the gutter. It’d started with his hands. Sansa loved men with large hands; the kind of hands that could nearly circle her waist, strong hands gripping her thighs, rough palms against her soft skin. That man had a pair of hands worth fantasizing about and she was only human, so of course Sansa noticed how nice they were. How could she not? And, of course, that led to the very reasonable and strictly scientific observation that his anatomy was proportional, no doubt. Huge, it was probably huge. Sansa cleared her throat. It was best not to think about it now.

“Be nice,” their mother warned with a soft smile and tucked her planner into her purse. “He’s not from here.”

“Ya think? Dude sticks out like a sore thumb.” Arya chomped on her lollypop, too impatient to see it through. “Mom, tell her!”

There was more. Okay, here it came. Last night’s date was a swing and a miss. She couldn’t blame her poor mother, though Sansa had momentarily blamed her mom’s good intentions. Why on earth the woman thought Sansa would be well-paired with that washed-up hipster was beyond her? But no one was beyond redemption, least of all her dear mother trying at cupid. _Play it cool._

Sansa smoothed down the front of her plaid skirt, poised to graciously accept a do-over set-up with the reluctant man about town. Why yes, of course, she’d love to show him around! She’d be thrilled to be his new friend! What kind of Stark would she be if she didn’t take him under her wing?

“Detective Clegane will be at the Founders Festival,” her mom explained. “I saw him at town hall picking up the informational packet for the police department’s table.”

_Don’t look disappointed._ Sansa forced an enthusiastic smile. It was silly. She was being silly. What a silly thing to think; that her mother would meet the guy and immediately launch into trying to set him up with her very single daughter who was very much over her ex and very ready to mingle with a real man.

“Oh, so he’s man-handling their table this year?” Sansa chirped.

_Shit._

“Man-handling?” Arya repeated. Nothing escaped her, least of all this. She was intrigued. She stared at Sansa. A knowing look, she was onto her.

Sansa closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. “Manning. He’s manning the table this year for the police department?”

Her mom and Arya glanced at one another. Oh God, now they both knew. Sansa’s cheeks blazed. Even Jeyne stared at her.

“Yes,” her mom replied. “It’s next to our table, actually, which gives you two plenty of time to be welcoming and kind.”

Their mom shifted a pointed finger between Sansa and Arya, as if they had to be told. Maybe Arya did. Sansa didn’t need someone to twist her arm into welcoming Detective Clegane to town.

“That’s her gig, not mine,” Arya groused and flung her hand in Sansa’s direction. “I’m the cool one. She’s the nice one.”

“I’m cool too!” Sansa pouted; a weak pout that matched a weak protest. She was cool in her own way. Sure, it wasn’t the hell-raiser, life-of-the-party kind of way that Arya was, but she had her merits.

“You bring balance to one another and you’re both better for it,” their mother intervened with tranquil wisdom. Her presence was perpetually a calming and stabilizing force. “Your father and I didn’t name this store ‘Sun and Moon’ for nothing,” she reminded.

_“You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts.”_

As if her father’s words and the call to unity weren’t enough, her parents had to open this shop, an inheritance of forced bonding between Sansa and Arya. Luckily for everyone, by the time they’d both left their teenage years behind, true friendship blossomed between them. With it came their abilities, an awakening of sorts and their magick stronger because of the other. They were business partners and best friends, but above all they were sisters.

Their mother scooped up her purse and gave them all a kiss on the cheek, even Jeyne.

“Well, I’m off. I need to pick up Bran from chess club and Rickon from rugby. It’s almost closing time. You girls have everything you need for inventory tonight?”

“Yes,” Sansa and Arya grumbled in unison. They’d send Jeyne home, no sense in all three of them having to suffer the tedium.

After their mother left, Sansa sent Jeyne home too. It was doubtful there’d be any customers this late. The sun had all but set and Jeyne had been cleaning all day. Sansa counted down the cash register as Arya leaned across the counter from her.

“Phil told me something else interesting.”

Strange. Phil never had much interesting to say, just gossip he heard or observed at the coffee shop. He was a nice guy, but big events in his life amounted to seeing a deer in his front yard or scoring a two-for-one sale on white socks. Whatever this was, it was interesting enough that Arya appeared utterly tantalized and buzzing with the instinct to spill some secret.

“You were flirting with the new guy.” Arya reared back and crossed her arms over her chest. The look on her face spoke on her behalf—she demanded an answer, an explanation.

Yes, there had been flirting. Shameless flirting, in fact. The kind of flirting that made Sansa faintly cringe at herself in hindsight. For example, what the hell possessed her to say “please do” when he said he’d hold her to her coffee recommendation? He was a worldly man from the city. Hopefully, he’d take pity on a country bumpkin trying her hand at being a master-level flirt.

Sansa measured her response, but still swallowed hard. “I was being friendly.”

“Uh huh. I bet so.” Arya flashed a smile, her lips stained cherry red. “You gonna give him a ride on your welcome wagon?”

Sansa’s mouth fell open, but only laughter spilled out; no affront or snooty gasps she might’ve paid her little sister years ago. She’d grown to appreciate Arya’s wicked sense of humor that left her in stitches. Sansa laughed now until her side ached and tears easily surfaced in her eyes.

“Oh my God! Stop,” she begged when Arya erupted into hilarity too. It only egged her on further.

A figure bundled up in layers marched towards the store with characteristic determination and a red coat mismatched to a burgundy scarf.

“Oh, no. Lollys is coming,” Sansa muttered, effectively sounding the alarm.

Arya bolted from the counter and darted around the table of incense and sage sticks. “Fuck! It’s your turn.”

“It’s not my turn!” Sansa hollered after her. 

“It is!” Arya’s voice grew fainter as she ducked into the stockroom.

“Fix that drain while you’re back there!”

Sansa didn’t know if Arya heard her. It was too late. Lollys whipped open the shop door, sending the bells into chaos as they clanked against the glass.

The girl was shit for timing. She always wandered in right before closing. Sansa eyed the clock. Ten ’til six. At least she was predictable. Sansa tried to look busy. The problem was that they kept the shop too tidy; no stacks of paper she could shuffle around with a deep sigh or piles of crap she could fuss with.

“Hi Lollys.”

The greeting died on Sansa’s lips. The girl’s full, ruddy cheeks glistened with fresh tears. Sansa’s brow wrinkled. It wasn’t as if she didn’t care about the girl who was a constant presence here and for the same goddamn reason.

“What’s the matter?” Sansa asked anyway, though she could’ve guessed.

That shit bag. That’s what was the matter.

Lollys tossed a small, black muslin sachet to the counter. Through the loose weave, Sansa saw the outline of crystals and dried herbs.

“It’s not working,” Lollys choked on a sob.

The desperation poured off the woman; not the kind that meant she’d throw herself at any man in the name of finding love. One man collected all Lollys’s love and devotion and he repaid her with breadcrumbs of affection, enough to string Lollys along and nothing more.

Sansa took the sachet from the counter and turned it over in her hand as she scrutinized it. The stones hummed against her palm in a familiar vibration—rose quartz—and when she lifted it to her nose, it still held the faint scent of dried lavender and basil.

A love charm. A sloppy one. The energy it held wasn’t that of love, but greed. She knew these kinds of witches. They didn’t care about helping people, only about turning a profit.

“Where did you get this?” Sansa asked despite the images appearing in her mind’s eye—glossy brown curls; a pretty smile that housed mischief; effortlessly stylish, charming, and savvy. Above all, the witch in her vision wasn’t stupid about how she ran her business, a whole brand of magick for the modern age.

Sansa retrieved a box of tissues from underneath the counter and slid it to Lollys.

“My sister got it for me in Highgarden, Massachusetts,” she informed between blows of her nose that came like a trumpet blare. 

Of course.

The Tyrells espoused green witchcraft and garden grimoire. All-natural, they called it. Yes, indeed, they liked green, but the verdant shade of money was perhaps their favorite. They turned out Instagram-worthy trinkets to people who had only a passing interest in the occult. They preyed on the uninformed masses who flocked to magick as a cure-all quick fix to their problems.

Yes, the Tyrells had suffered during the witch trials and their ancestral line carried the wound from the Burning Times. The Starks hadn’t been spared either, but the Tyrells considered their suspect witchery to be retribution. They’d charge an Instagram influencer an arm and a leg for some #BasicWitch swag, maybe in hopes that departed Tyrells would rejoice beyond the veil. That’ll show ‘em!

“Honey, that coven will sell you anything.” Sansa tossed the sachet to the counter. Lollys collected it and shoved it into her coat pocket.

For a moment, Sansa thought the girl might relent. It’d been months of coming into the shop and buying up crystals against Sansa’s gentle encouragement otherwise; months of haranguing Arya about failed attempts at spells; months of tarot readings that all revealed similar outcomes—Three of Swords, The Devil, Seven of Swords, Nine of Swords, Eight of Cups. The cards all pointed to heartache, infidelity, manipulation.

Lollys patted her cheeks with a crumpled tissue and drew a deep breath that also squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. It looked like a breakthrough, a coming to terms with the unfortunate truth. Lollys dug into her other coat pocket and stepped to the counter. This time a wad of cash landed against the glass.

“I need him to love me back,” she insisted on a hush and stared imploringly at Sansa. “Whatever magick you used. That’s what I want. I’ve never asked you for this.”

Sansa’s eyes dropped to the money, dirty money. Lollys had no idea what she was asking for. True, she’d never taken it this far and for good reason.

Once upon a time, Sansa loved a man; an impossible, fickle man. The spell was only meant to be a little nudge, something to inspire him to commit and to see that she was the one for him. That nudge had worked for a little while. She basked in his attention and utter devotion, but it devolved into a dangerous obsession. That obsession quickly turned dark. He’d shown up at her house, at work, followed her wherever she went; threatened to hurt himself or others if she didn’t agree to be with him always, to never be out of his sight. It’d taken a full coven to undo the spell, and even that hadn’t been enough.

Extreme circumstances called for extreme magick. The coven had to use a banishing spell. Afterwards, he disappeared, suddenly gone. The Hardyng family moved out of state too. The last Sansa heard, his parents had tracked Harry down living alone in Alaska. It was a scandal for the Stark family, a total embarrassment for a town that’d always tolerated their ways.

Everyone knew the stories of her family’s benevolent abilities—healing, clairvoyance, help for those in need. It’d been a stain on their reputation that, with time, eventually washed clean. Everyone told Sansa not to blame herself. The spell was primed to backfire. He was a troubled man to begin with. Lesson learned. Never again. She’d gladly suffer blind dates and kiss her share of frogs to find her prince.

Sansa picked up a pencil and pushed the cash back towards Lollys. It carried bad energy. The girl didn’t intend it, she knew, but love had a way of turning dark sometimes and Lollys was in the danger zone.

“I don’t do love spells. People have to exercise free will and choose how they want to.”

Sansa stood firm in her refusal. Lollys knew. Her bloodshot eyes scanned the store, perhaps for Arya. If she was hoping for a sympathetic avenue in Arya, she’d be barking up the wrong tree.

“Think of it this way,” Sansa reasoned. “If he suddenly texted you back, called, and showed up at your door, you’d never know if it was his true feelings or the spell.”

“It doesn’t matter to me!” Lollys erupted with hysteria at the eminent dead end to whatever she hoped to accomplish this evening. She cried into the tissue.

“But it would,” Sansa urged with patience and sympathy. The girl was so obviously hurting. “It eventually would. I’ve seen how these things play out, Lollys. I’ve lived it. Even magick done with the best of intentions can backfire. Love magick that interferes with free will almost always does.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Lollys pled. More tears welled in her eyes.

“Focus on self-healing.”

Sansa circled the counter to the candle display and plucked one white and one green candle from the shelf. From the bowls of crystals, she selected rhodonite for self-healing and clear quartz, the master crystal. Sansa placed them in a small shop bag.

“The next full moon light these candles,” she instructed. “Write his name on a piece of paper and burn it. Visualize breaking the binds. See yourself freed from a cage; chains broken. When you’re finished, bury the ashes outside and take a salt bath. Keep these stones on you until the new moon. In the meantime, light the candles every night until they’ve burned all the way through.”

After Lollys had paid, Sansa handed the bag over to her, but held out her palm.

“Give me the sachet. I’ll take care of it. It’s not serving you well, so it needs to be disposed of properly.”

Lollys dipped her hand into her pocket and reluctantly parted with the sachet. Her face dropped with a moping expression, pouty lip and all, as she gave a sad little wave and made for the door.

“You’re gonna be alright,” Sansa called after her. Sometimes people just needed to be reminded. “Put your energy into what makes you feel better. Not him. He’s only ever brought you sadness.”

Lollys burst into tears and trumpeted her nose again into the tear-soaked tissue.

_Oh, no._ She’d sprung another leak; one Sansa was not equipped to handle. She looked on helplessly.

“You’re a good witch, Sansa,” Lollys blubbered and pulled open the door. The bell chimes swallowed up her sniffles.

“Is the sad sack gone?” Arya hollered from the back after a few beats of blissful quiet.

Sansa turned around as Arya crept across the store. “That’s a horrible thing to say!”

“What? That girl is Teflon for men. Nothing sticks!” Arya peered out the window towards Main Street cast in twilight now, as if standing guard in case Lollys popped back in. She flipped the sign from “open” to “closed” and locked the door for good measure. “You know it’s true. Tell me I’m lying.”

Sansa thought about it far longer than was probably necessary because it was the most fitting analogy. Lollys didn’t repel men. On the surface, she had a lot going for her. She wrote her own column for the town newspaper and was fun to be around when she wasn’t crying into a tub of Ben and Jerry’s and drunk texting everyone she knew. Perfectly good men took an interest in Lollys and then suddenly slipped away, gone forever.

Sansa skirted the truth and changed the subject. “She’s going through a rough time. Did you fix the drain?”

“I don’t know how to do that! We need that pipe icing.”

“Pipe icing?”

_What the hell is she talking about?_ Pipe icing. Sansa’s face scrunched in confusion.

“You mean caulking? I don’t think that’s what it needs. We just need to plug it until the plumber can come.”

With her head tilted to the side and her black bob sweeping against her shoulder, Arya did her damnedest at being adorable. She had her moments.

“See, you’re better at this sort of thing,” Arya cooed and joined Sansa behind the counter.

“God, we still need to do inventory,” Sansa grumbled.

Sunday nights were not meant to be spent working late and taking inventory. Sunday nights were meant for curling up on the couch with comfort food and bad TV or bubble baths and podcasts.

Arya sensed the changing tides of Sansa’s mood and responded to the ebb with a smile and a poke at Sansa’s ribs.

“Okay, I’ll go get takeout,” she declared. A bossy little thing, her ideas were rarely negotiable. It was a good thing they were usually good. “You hit up the hardware store and get whatever we need for the pipe. We’ll meet back here and make it fun. A little music, food, dancing, inventory.”

“Alright,” Sansa agreed. They were stuck doing this whether they wanted to or not. Arya had the right of it. They might as well make it a good time.

Sansa and Arya bundled up in their coats, killed the lights, and locked the shop door.

“I’ll meet you back here,” Sansa said as they spilled onto the sidewalk outside.

She tugged on the baby blue beanie Mildred from the police station knitted her. Arya had one too, black of course. Mildred had even managed a small red skull on the side.

“Roger.” Arya saluted Sansa and moseyed across the street towards the diner, the only restaurant open “late” on a Sunday where anything open past seven-thirty was a travesty.

As Sansa watched Arya cross the street, she envisioned her sister wrapped in white light, a protective charm she always cast to grant Arya safe passage wherever she went.

Sansa made her way through purple dusk and past old trees wrapped in twinkle lights and punctuating Main Street. The five blocks to the hardware store were rife with superstitious traditions—a kiss blown towards the cemetery for ancestors departed; three taps against the old oak’s trunk for good luck and abundance; crossing the street before passing the haunted manor to avoid picking up any phantasmal tag-alongs.

Sansa traipsed through the cobblestone’s carpet of fallen leaves. Those leaves danced on the breeze in a tapestry of rich colors and the thin, cold air carried the scent of burning wood. The hardware store stood at the far end of Main Street, well-beyond the hustle and bustle (or as close as this town could get). Beyond it, the road narrowed, and the light faded as it wove through the forest and towards the single lane covered bridge. Stark Fall was merely a blip on the map. No one came here by accident.

She dipped into the muted yellow glow of the hardware store and was greeted by a blast of warm air. This place seemed to always possess an odd haze, a perpetual vignette soft at the edges. The shelves were densely packed to an almost impressive degree, a complicated Tetris-like puzzle. You had to know what you were looking for. Sansa didn’t. Well, not really. A stop gap was all she needed but didn’t know what that might look like.

The old shop keeper, Mr. Mormont, usually putzed around or fell asleep behind the counter with the newspaper in his lap. He looked half-asleep now and gave a bleary-eyed nod to Sansa.

“Good evening, Mr. Mormont,” Sansa trilled. 

“Miss Sansa,” he managed through a yawn that revealed gold-capped molars.

“Plumbing?” She stopped mid-stride. She’d never find it on her own before closing time.

“Right down there.” He pointed to the third aisle.

Three. A lucky number. A balanced number. There was something rather pleasant about the number three—three blind mice, three wise men, three little birds. Good things came in threes.

Sansa ducked into the third aisle and halfway down zeroed in on what she was here for; plumbing accessories—bits of PVC pipe, brushes, adhesives—next to the rakes, shovels, and lawn bags because that made sense.

Apparently, Mr. Mormont believe that the illogical layout meant people had to peruse and that meant they would buy more items. Who could resist impulse buying a drill bit set? She’d be in real trouble if she stumbled upon wood glue. Who didn’t love a good wood glue? To each their own.

It seemed more likely to send frustrated customers driving the thirty minutes to the nearest big box store where there was some semblance of order. It was all part of the charm. This town thrived on the quirky, mildly infuriating charm where things made little sense, but all in the name of being whacky and whimsical.

She was in the ballpark, though. The tube of epoxy putty Sansa grabbed from the shelf looked promising. Then again, so too did this self-fusing tape that boasted a myriad of applications, enough that the guy on the package looked disproportionately enthralled with his wide eyes and cheesy smile.

Sansa hummed “Three Little Birds”—not the worst ear worm to have in her head—and scanned the back of each box. Oh yes, every little thing was gonna be alright because between epoxy putty and tape, surely one of them would conquer a leaky pipe.

Sansa was ready to buy both and call it a night, but a figure emerged in her periphery. Tall. Too tall. Taller than anyone in town. Only one man held that distinction. Sansa swallowed down her heart that’d suddenly leapt to her throat.

He stopped. Sansa shifted her eyes down the aisle. Detective Clegane stood there in jeans and motorcycle boots, a white t-shirt, and leather jacket; a polished and simple outward appearance for what Sansa sensed might be a complicated man. Or maybe he wasn’t. What did she really know about him? Enough to know she was intrigued. _Very_ intrigued.

“Hi.” She waved with the epoxy stick in hand. It rattled in its container. Sansa laughed. Why did she laugh? She couldn’t help it. The giddiness would find its outlet, dignity be damned.

“Sansa,” he greeted with a nod. His long hair tumbled about his massive shoulders. Did he always look this effortlessly sexy for a run to the hardware store?

“Pleasure seeing you again.” The corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. He glanced away as if second guessing himself, but his eyes returned to her. “I like that song. ‘Three Little Birds.’ It’s good.”

Oh God. He heard that. Sansa was a decent enough singer. That wasn’t the problem. He caught her off guard. She hadn’t expected to see him here.

The question remained. What did she really know about him? Time to take stock. It was inventory night, after all.

For one, she knew she liked his smile that barely hid some unspoken mischief; a dirty joke or innuendoed-pun on the tip of his tongue. Someone could probably argue she was reading too much into that handsome smile—more of a smirk, really; existing incomplete on his lips (beautiful lips, by the way). Her counter—his eyes gave him away; steel gray, intense, and the “I’m gonna eat you alive” sort of looks he gave. His gaze found that sweet spot of lingering just long enough to make sure she noticed, but not so long that it felt heavy-handed with the salacious suggestion it carried.

“You too,” Sansa replied and inadvertently slipped from the plumbing section and across the divide into lawn care. She was on his turf now. He shifted down the aisle as well. “I mean seeing you,” she clarified a beat too late to sound natural. “It’s good to see you. Also, the song. But…yeah, you.”

Oh boy. This wasn’t off to a great start. Her tongue was all but useless in her mouth; that clunky thing was going to bungle this. _Just smile._

She caught the dull reflection of herself in the spade of a shovel. Nope, not like that. That was a creepy smile; too toothy, too eager.

_Look away._

The rakes suddenly riveted her. What fine craftsmanship! She even encircled the wooden handle of one and stroked. Nope, not that. Sandor chuckled. Sansa yanked her hand away and shoved it in her coat pockets along with the plumbing products. Shit. Now it looked like she was shoplifting. She pulled her hands from her pockets and gripped the tube of epoxy putty and self-fusing tape for dear life.

Her cheeks ached, and she glanced at him. He scanned the row of lawn bags. She was being bested by lawn bags, perhaps the most mundane thing on this entire planet. _Damn it._

“I met your mom today,” Sandor said and skimmed the packaging of the lawn bags in his hand. “Nice lady.”

Okay, she could work with this. This was her in. She’d thank her mother later. Sansa eased further down the aisle and Sandor did the same. They put on their charades, though, eying random items tucked between a larger theme—grout cleaner amongst lawn seed, light bulbs amongst Drano.

“Yeah, she told me. She said your table is going to be next to ours at the Founders Festival.”

Sandor looked intrigued. He stuffed the lawn bags back to the shelf, abandoning them altogether. Maybe he didn’t need them. Maybe he’d go back for them later. He didn’t seem to care about lawn maintenance right now and Sansa might’ve done the same with her items but the bathroom sink really did need to be fixed and, if she came back empty-handed after another run-in with Sandor Clegane, Arya would for sure be onto her.

Another meeting. Their _third_ meeting. In aisle three. A very lucky number, indeed.

“Is that right?” Sandor’s smile fully spread across his lips now, both sides lifted in equal delight, it seemed. “Did you arrange that?”

Time to take stock again. Number two—flirtation. He flirted with her. At least, she assumed it was flirting. The constellation of evidence—smirks; eyes; body language casual but open and leaning towards her; his deep, husky voice (that was number three on the list; it was swoon-worthy).

The key to his flirtation was that it disabused itself of an outcome. It wasn’t weaponized to succeed in some end—her phone number, a date, lots of sex. No, it was flirtation for the sake of nothing else; elevator eyes just because he appreciated the shape of her body; devilish smiles because he felt like it; deep rumbling laughs because why the hell not? If nothing came of it, so what? C’est la vie, and _that_ was sexy. Confidence was always sexy.

Sansa licked her bottom lip. His eyes landed there with deliberate weight. She did it again, slower. He smiled.

“Sadly, no.” She pouted slightly. He inched towards her, closing the distance. “They don’t leave me in charge of such important decisions.”

“I hear ya. Us rank-and-file just show up when and where they say.”

Even closer, he drifted, each heavy thud of his boots heaven to her ears. Only a small display of vacuum bags separated them. That space grew heavy with tension, such _delicious_ tension. Sansa gazed up at him. He matched her eyes and cleared his throat, perhaps for more conversation.

The unthinkable happened now. Too enraptured, neither of them seemed to notice someone approach and slot themselves between them. Of all places, of all items, of all times, old man Roberts just _had_ to buy vacuum bags. Who on earth even owned a vacuum with bags these days? Apparently, he did and, apparently, this was going to be an agonizing decision as he gaped at his whopping three choices for far longer than anyone ever should.

If looks could kill, Sandor’s would slaughter. He shot the man an annoyed glare but glanced at Sansa again and rolled his eyes with another smile, an inside joke between them because Mr. Roberts was so blithely unconcerned about bluntly inserting himself in the middle of flirtation.

“Well, I look forward to it,” Sandor said loudly.

Mr. Roberts didn’t flinch, too engrossed in the Hoover Type U bags.

Sandor leaned against the shelf, one arm casually draped along it and his other hand propped on his hip. Even the way he stood was sexy. This man was wholly committed to an incident in aisle three because if he kept at it, Sansa was going to keel over like some damsel in a silver movie, overcome and prone to fainting. Maybe Mr. Roberts would leave then.

Sansa stared at the old man. He didn’t budge. She would not be run-off by a skeletal old man who was out far too late on a Sunday night. Was it imperative he vacuum _tonight_?

“So, you’re from Brooklyn,” Sansa continued, blocking out Mr. Roberts. Sandor towered over him anyway. If she just kept gazing up at him, Mr. Roberts would blur in her periphery. 

It probably should’ve been posed as a question. Sandor chuckled and nodded. Pride surfaced on his face. She noticed the five o’clock shadow that peppered his cheeks and chin. He was definitely one of those men who had to shave every day. No doubt, he had absolutely no problems growing a beard if he wanted to. Then again, with a jawline like his, it’d be a crying shame to hide it beneath a beard.

Sandor lifted one brow at her and lowered his voice to a resonant, grumbling tone. “Your crystal ball tell you that?”

“No, but your accent did,” Sansa replied and softened her words with sensual ease.

He responded to that. His eyes drifted down, down, and even lower down her body and a faint little grunt issued at the back of his throat as if he liked what he saw. She’d left the buttons of her coat undone and allowed her leg to appear through the front, and her skirt rose a little up her thigh.

“I take it you’ve heard my secret then.” Sansa bit her bottom lip and tilted her head to the side.

Sandor shuffled forward. Sansa did the same. The magnetism grew. So too did the heat. She was burning up under her coat.

“Is it really a secret if the whole town knows?” Sandor chuckled. He removed the hand from his hip and dipped his fingertips into the pocket of his jeans.

“I guess only to strangers,” Sansa said distractedly because she couldn’t help herself. The way the light streamed from up above, Sansa could make out the contour of his muscles through his thin white shirt.

Number Four on the List of Things She Knew About Sandor Clegane—muscles.

She’d seen those muscle-bound bros who posed in front of their mirrors for selfies they probably bombarded unsuspecting women with. She’d seen them at the gym, suffered their stares, and spurned their advances. They’d always look so confused. How could she reject them despite— _gasp!_ —their ridiculous biceps and chicken legs?

Sandor probably never skipped leg day. In fact, Sandor was so well-proportioned with his bulk and massive size, that Sansa imagined he put it on naturally—no gimmicky work-out routines or guzzling down protein shakes.

He laughed; a low, rasping laugh. She was caught red-handed in checking him out. Sansa wasn’t known for subtlety in this arena. She couldn’t manage effortless aloofness. If she was all in, people knew about it, and Detective Sandor Clegane most definitely knew about it now.

He stared at her beneath his brow with an intense gaze. The heat rose between them, the heaviness too. Sansa felt her lips part, and she matched his eyes. So what if she was caught? Oops. He’d know she rather liked what she saw. Oh well.

Sansa tossed an alluring stare right back at him and let her lips curl in a smile just for him. He liked it, it seemed; very much so. He stared at her breasts and licked his bottom lip.

Now this… _this_ was spark—utterly combustible, a “hide your flammables unless you want a house fire” sort of exquisite heat; life-giving, earth-moving heat.

Mr. Roberts gawked at Sansa through coke-bottle glasses. They rendered his eyes buggy and magnified his horror. His head whipped to Sandor and then back to Sansa, as if he’d suddenly been roused from his laser focus on vacuum bags only to find himself the only thing standing between a powder keg and a lit match. Very understandably, he grabbed one of each vacuum bag and scrambled down the aisle.

Sansa’s lips erupted in a smile, one Sandor matched with apparent enthrallment. Like the Red Sea parting, they both took one large step towards each other but miscalculated the distance. Sansa stumbled into him. His hands gripped her forearms to stabilize her. Sansa scooted backwards until a respectable distance was between them; not too respectable, though. She was in the Goldilocks zone between being on top of him and retreating into the plumbing section.

“Let’s see,” Sandor began. “You know my name, where I work, where I’m from. Even in New York, I think that’d qualify us as more than strangers.”

Sansa nodded and fought the urge to play with her hair, a telltale sign she was nervous and needed something to occupy her fingers.

“Agreed. Well, what else have you heard about me?”

Sandor leaned against the shelf again. Number Five—he smelled nice, the hint of aftershave and clean linen. This wasn’t some bottled Eau De Man others wore—offensive musk base with heart notes of cleverly named bullshit like Timber Swagger or Mountain Dominance that all smelled like lighter fluid with a hint of nondescript spice. Not him. He smelled good, the kind of man who, if he let her borrow a t-shirt or jacket, she’d bury her face in it all night. 

“A lot of things.”

He stared at her more fondly now. This was a good sign. The revelation of her background and profession was usually a watershed moment in any would-be love connections. He seemed amused.

“You’re a witch. You own a shop with rocks and sticks and things. The town is named after your family.”

Eh, close enough. Sansa nodded. “I see your point. More than strangers.”

In a beat of sweet silence, they gazed at one another, two hopeless fools. The intensity stood in absurd contrast to her blind date.

“I hope so,” he muttered and motioned to the items in her hand. “What’re you here for?”

She’d nearly forgotten about them. Her iron tight grip had mangled the cardboard packaging. They looked like they’d been through hell and back. 

“The bathroom sink at the shop is leaking.”

Sansa dampened a frown. _Please, not hardware talk._ She didn’t even like the hardware store. B there it was; that lopsided smirk and a slight narrowing of his eyes.

“Call me old-fashioned, but that seems like a job for your boyfriend to do.”

Praise the Universe! Oh, he was smart. She loved smart men. Of course, he didn’t give a shit about hardware talk; just a sneaky little segue into ascertaining more information about her. _Key_ information. Detective Clegane was good at his job.

“Clever,” Sansa laughed and bit back a shy smile. Too late to be timid now. “No boyfriend. My woman brain will have to figure it out on my own.”

She nudged him gently with her elbow. He seemed to like that and maybe, just maybe, he thought about touching her too—a nudge right back or a sweep of the fingertips against her arm. 

“I guess I had that coming,” he conceded and paused. He was definitely mulling _something_ over. Sandor drew a breath, stopped short of saying something, stared behind her, and then gave an “alright, fuck it” shrug. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet.

“I’m sure you’ve got the magic touch but, as a dedicated civil servant, I suppose I should give you this.”

Slotted between his middle and forefinger, Sandor held out a business card. The town’s seal glimmered in embossed gold next to the printed font of his name, title, and phone number. Detective Sandor Clegane.

Sansa took it from him. Did the lights get brighter? She glanced up. No, still the same yellow fluorescence, but this was like a scene out of a movie; the part where the clouds break with heavenly light and angels sing. Hallelujah, he was giving her his number! Should she give him her number? She’d dated before, flirted, had college flings, long-term relationships. Why did she no longer have a playbook for this? What was her move here?

Sansa cobbled together some wit from the rubble of her composure. “Is this in case my cat gets stuck in a tree?”

Damn, she even sounded seductive to her own ears. Sandor grinned and lit at with that, not immune to the light or the heat. She swore his cheeks were flusher now than they had been a mere moment ago.

“Sure.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice, eyes steady on her. “If your pussy cat is ever in need.” His eyes dropped down her body and crept back up again. “Or if you just need the right tool for the job.”

Oh, no. He’d really done it now. Sansa’s cheeks were on fire. This was it. This was how people spontaneously combusted. It wasn’t some kundalini awakening. Nope, it was sexy men in aisle three at the hardware store uttering lines like that. What on earth could she possibly come back with?

“Wow,” Sansa erupted with a laugh, bent over and with her hand to her mouth before she stood again. “That’s…something.”

He was a good sport about it. Sandor joined in on the hilarity. A man who could laugh at himself was part and parcel to a good sense of humor. This man had it in spades. All of it.

“Seriously, if you ever need anything.” He pointed to his business card that Sansa cradled in her palms like a priceless treasure. “Or someone to fix that pipe for you.”

“Oh sorry, I think only boyfriends or plumbers are qualified to do that job,” Sansa joked through a smile bright enough that he couldn’t misunderstand her humor, like the dry piece of toast she’d gone on a date with last night. “Unless you’re a detective, firefighter, _and_ a plumber.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and stood up tall. “Maybe I am.”

“Hmm, a renaissance man, I see.”

Sandor nodded slow, plucked lawn bags from the shelf—any kind would do, apparently—and eased forward enough that his body almost met hers. 

“Call me whatever you want,” he rasped and tipped his head to the business card. “And _whenever_ you want. Just don’t call me a stranger again…little bird.”

He paid her a wink as he passed and might as well have slammed on the accelerator to her heart. No longer a little flutter, it pounded in her chest.

“I promise,” Sansa managed, a mere croak amongst the cardiac distress. A nickname. He already had a nickname for her. And a cute one, too.

Sansa turned and watched him saunter down the aisle. Sandor flashed a smile over his shoulder and waved with the lawn bags in his hand.

“Bye,” she called after him.

When Sandor was out of sight, Sansa sunk against the shelves. She plucked a Hoover Type U package from the shelf and fanned herself with it. No wonder ladies of yore carried fans with them. She didn’t have the luxury of some exquisite fan edged with lace from Paris, so a vacuum bag in plastic packaging would just have to do.

She listened to Sandor shoot the breeze with Mr. Mormont as he checked out. Sports. They talked about some football game on TV. He paid for his lawn bags and left, and Sansa peeled herself from the shelf.

With her faculties thoroughly launched into outer space, Sansa wandered up to the counter with the vacuum bag and mindlessly paid for her items, _all_ the items, including the vacuum bag she had absolutely no use for. Maybe she’d give it to Mr. Roberts for running him off with her and Sandor’s very palpable sexual tension in aisle three.

Outside, Sansa gulped down the chilly air that felt divine against her flushed skin. With her temperature tamed, the come down of the run-in left her giddy. She couldn’t help the smile plastered to her face. She might’ve even skipped down the sidewalk towards the store, but the combination of heels and cobblestone had “bad idea” written all over it.

She walked at a dawdling pace instead and a dreamy little sigh escaped her on a white puff in the chilly night.

Sandor Clegane. He was handsome; unconventionally so, but still handsome. Funny, wickedly funny. And when was the last time someone had left her feeling like this? Too long. Far too long. He was the kind of man she’d hoped to meet, dimensional and holographic in an otherwise flat existence with two-dimensional men.

The five blocks passed in a spirited reverie where Sansa just barely remembered to cross the street before the haunted manor, tap the oak three times, and blow a kiss to the cemetery, this one for her father, specifically. She met up with Arya at the diner and the two made for the shop.

“That much fun at the hardware store, huh?” Arya prodded when the smile refused to leave Sansa’s lips. She didn’t feel like explaining it now, so she conjured an excuse.

“I’m just excited for food. I’m starving.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie. Her stomach grumbled at the thought of chicken fingers and cheese fries, her and Arya’s regular order.

Two store fronts down, Sansa noticed pebbles glimmering amongst the leaves and cobblestone. Strange. They hadn’t been there before. She and Arya approached their store, and the pebbles crunched beneath the heels of their boots.

Sansa’s arm shot up to stop Arya from getting any closer. These weren’t pebbles at all, but bits of broken glass. A gasp escaped Sansa when her eyes landed on their shop.

There was a gaping hole where the storefront window used to be. Glass littered the windowsill of the shop and the floor, shattered amongst books and a basket of hand-woven scarfs, bells, and singing bowls.

“Fuck!” Arya screamed into the night and stamped her foot against the cobblestone. “I want cheese fries, not this bullshit!” With a drawn face, thoroughly devastated that this would delay their meal, she stared at Sansa. “What do we do?”

Sansa squared her shoulders and eyed the broken window. A crime had been committed.

“I know who to call,” she calmly said and dipped her hand into her coat pocket. 

“Who?” Arya demanded and, when Sansa hadn’t immediately responded and instead fished her phone from her purse, Arya persisted. “Sansa, who? If you say the Ghost Busters, I’m going to fucking kill you and eat your cheese fries.”

Sansa unlocked her phone and, with the screen illuminating her face, she punched in the number and lifted her eyes to Arya. There was only one man for this job. In reality, there were at least two other detectives at the police station, but those others hadn’t made such a dazzling impression on her and they certainly weren’t tossing around their business cards.

“Sandor Clegane.” Sansa lifted the phone to her ear as it rang.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a few things you might have noticed...
> 
> Magick: The word “magic” is spelled “magick” in this chapter. This is fairly common in occultism and witchcraft to separate ritual practices from how “magic” is often perceived in Western culture. 
> 
> Burning Times: This term is broadly used to describe the periods in Europe and North America when scores of mostly women (but also men) were charged with witchcraft and sentenced to death, many times by fire. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! If you’re enjoying this story, please let me know in the comments! I love reading your thoughts and each and every one truly makes my day! 
> 
> Until next time…much love to you all! 🖤


	3. Strange Magic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please note the title of this fic has changed from "Don't Chase The Dead" to "Spellbound." Thank you!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! You may have noticed the title of this fic has changed. Brian Warner is an abusive shitbag and I don’t want my writing associated with him or his “art”. I found myself having a viscerally negative reaction to his music and thus the previous title of this fic. Anyhow, I like this title better and, in this house, we support survivors. Onwards and upwards, we carry on!

There comes a time in every man’s life when he identifies those undeniable and inarguable signposts on the road to liking a chick— _really_ liking her; not just fucking her soundly on Saturday, sending her off to church on Sunday, and screening her call on Monday.

The time between those stalwart markers might change depending on the girl and, of course, there was always the possibility of bailing out before reaching the destination. For Sandor, the signs were the same. He relied on them as a man who valued not only reliance on routine, but evidence, facts, truth. What he knew—where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire, and Sansa Stark was burning him up.

He might’ve approached this journey with lackadaisical ease, disregarding the end state and enjoying the views along the way. That was one option and the pace he’d taken in most of his trysts with women. Nice and easy, like a Sunday cruise with the windows down.

Sansa Stark—sweet Sansa Stark who blushed and giggled but bantered with the best of them and teased with pretty smiles and big blue eyes—inspired speed and Sandor found himself helpless on a Sunday night, foot slammed on the pedal as he blazed past those reliable signposts.

The first sign—he’d only meant to quickly pop into the hardware store while the Giants game went to commercial break. In aisle three, that plan was shot to shit as the lovely (and very single) Miss Stark perused plumbing supplies. A quick trip turned into a conversation that snowballed into him giving her his number. It wasn’t the wisest move, but she threw him off his game. He’d have to wait for her to call. She might never.

The second sign—ten minutes after he rushed through the door and tossed the lawn bags to the table, his phone rang during a pivotal moment in the last quarter. The Giants were up three points. The Eagles were fourth and goal. With thirty seconds on the clock, all they had to do was hold the defense. Easy, but if he, Sandor Clegane, looked away for one second, it’d be ruined. Everything hinged on his singular focus. It was an unsaved Vermont number, though, and a Sunday night. A creeping suspicion had set in. What if it was her?

It was, in fact, her, and he was, in fact, smugger about it than he had any right to be. He hadn’t even cared that the Giants blew it. Maybe a little, but her voice lilting through the phone was balm to that ache. Of course, that was until she told him why she called (unfortunately, it wasn’t because she wanted him to come over and sort her pussy cat out).

Sandor had hurriedly shucked into his jacket and snatched up his keys.

_“Get in your car or another secured location. For your own safety, do not enter the premise. We’ll consider it an active crime scene until we can clear it.”_

Fuck, he’d sounded like a cop. And the Royal We wasn’t the one he wanted—her and him—but Sandor and New Guy Nathan who’d looked ready to blow his load at the chance for a real investigation of a real crime. Sandor had done his job, but nothing was missing, not even cash from the register. The only “evidence” was a large rock.

It was a broken window and not much else. He wrapped it up in less than an hour. Case closed? No, only because Sandor wasn’t that kind of detective and Sansa had looked so dispirited, her night thoroughly wrecked. Poor thing. He could’ve cheered her up.

The third sign—Sandor rolled his happy ass out of bed early this morning into the blustery cold and arrived at the police station an hour before his co-workers to figure out what the hell happened. And what the hell happened was on par for this town.

Sandor had pieced together the scene from Main Street’s security footage. Those cameras had been put up to capture that fucking raccoon in the act and for what? To charge it? To confirm that it was, in fact, behaving like most raccoons? Sandor had derided the cameras as a waste of resources and found himself eating his words this morning.

Unfortunately, the footage didn’t capture Sun and Moon’s store front, but it still told a compelling tale. Two teenagers came into frame and one picked up a rock. After a five second lapse in coverage, the dipshits made a run for it eastbound down Main Street. Just a couple bored kids. The end.

At his desk now, Sandor sipped his coffee. He didn’t like people crowding around him, but Chief Manderly couldn’t stop oohing and aahing over the lickety-split speed at which this case was solved. New Guy Nathan looked disappointed. He probably had wet dreams about setting up a task force and breaking down doors. He was in the wrong place for that shit, which wasn’t all that glamorous.

“How did you do it?” Nathan asked, as if Sandor were some fucking wizard waving his wand and making miracles happen.

Sandor leaned back in his seat.

“I always start with the obvious. The path of least resistance usually yields the most information. In this case, I checked security footage. There’s a blind spot on their shop, but there’s enough to see what happened.”

“Amazing,” Chief Manderly gushed again and patted Sandor on the shoulder.

Everyone seemed to know who the kids were too. Just shy of seventeen, the Reynolds twins were apparently the town hell-raisers. Where Sandor was from, that meant slinging drugs and hot-wiring cars. Here it meant TPing the statue in the town square, letting out air in tires, and throwing the occasional rock at a window.

“Fantastic work,” Harold chuckled and clapped.

Sandor cut a look at the man because this sort of reaction was a staple of sardonic ball busting at the 73rd, but Harold very unironically cheered Sandor on.

“Has anyone considered that this might be what run-of-the-mill competence looks like?” Mildred pitched in. He knew he could count on her.

Sandor pointed at the old woman. “There it is.”

“So now what?” Nathan asked Chief Manderly. This guy was champing at the bit for some action.

“I spoke to Catelyn Stark this morning,” Manderly replied. “I told her it was just the Reynolds twins running amok. She doesn’t want to press charges. So, the most we can do is issue a warning to those boys. The high school is dismissing early today at eleven. They’ll probably be out wandering around.”

Sandor’s fan club disbanded. Mostly. Harold resumed his crossword and Nathan fidgeted at his desk. Chief Manderly still hovered and his hands dipped in his pockets. 

“Got a minute?” he asked and motioned to his office.

Sandor glanced at the clock. A quarter past nine. Did he have a minute? He had hours, long blocks of time unencumbered by tasks that would ease the day along.

With a nod, he stood and followed Manderly into his office where the door was shut behind him. Sandor settled on the other side of the chief’s desk with a creeping sense of deja vu. Closed door talks were rare around here. Chief Manderly aired his business with abandon, the whole office privy to it. Small towns lacked privacy and that fractal quality repeated in just about everything here. Sandor couldn’t take a shit without it being front-page news.

Manderly stared across the desk with his eyes lachrymose. Allergies maybe. He always looked on the verge of tears.

“I’m very impressed with your initiative,” he started.

Sandor cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He didn’t like praise being reaped on him at work. It felt dirty and not in the way he liked.

“I appreciate it. You realize that’s fairly standard detective work, right?”

Manderly scooted past Sandor’s question. “I want you to keep training Nathan on the case he’s working, but I’m assigning you to a cold case.”

The chief trained his watery eyes on Sandor with preemptive concern and empathy, an unspoken _“do you think you can handle it?”_ look of a well-meaning, but out-of-touch leader.

_Halle-fucking-lujah._ Sandor finally had something to do, something to fill the large gaps of tedium—the time spent staring out the window, chit-chatting with Mildred, and otherwise slow-rolling his descent into boredom-induced mania.

Sandor shrugged and nodded. “Sure. That’s what I’m here for.”

That was the other thing—the encroaching sense of futility and wasted resources. Like any other bureaucratic organization, the NYPD put out body calls—positions that needed filled, the ones no one wanted but _someone_ had to do. Chiefs would come sniffing around for who they could pluck from the line and toss to the wolves.

It’d already happened to him. They sent Sandor to the dreaded 73rd precinct and here he was—in a comfortable office with overly nice people and too much time on his hands and he wanted nothing more than to be pounding down the cold, filthy streets with guns and knives being pulled on him. At least, he was useful then.

Manderly hesitated over something. He did it often, sputtering on unspoken words, constantly fearful of offending someone.

“That it?” Sandor prompted to dislodge whatever was stuck on the man’s tongue.

“No.” Manderly dodged Sandor’s imploring gaze and shuffled papers on his desk. “We work cases a little differently around here. I’m thinking of assigning you a partner.”

“Nathan? Sure. I’ll show him the ropes.”

“No, not Nathan.” Manderly drew a deep breath, more for the pause it afforded him than anything, it seemed. “I find cold cases benefit from an outsider, someone with another skill set not common in law enforcement.”

Sandor was hard-headed at times, but he wasn’t stupid. He saw the signs—the pregnant pause, the trepidation, Chief’s inability to look him in the eye, the ribbon of regret running through his voice.

Sandor steepled his fingers beneath his chin and leveled his eyes at Manderly. “A psychic.”

Chief lit up, delighted he didn’t have to say it. “Yes.”

“No,” Sandor sniped, downing the renegade idea just barely off the ground.

Chief’s jaw dropped and eyes bulged. “W-what?” he stuttered.

“I’ll give you my opinion for free. On rare—exceptionally _rare_ —occasions do psychics provide a lead that’s worth something. More often, they waste time and effort, and what I wipe my ass with is more useful than the shit they pull from theirs. It’s a non-starter. No.”

Manderly looked closer to waterworks now than ever. He gaped as if Sandor had fucked his mother and shared the gory details. Shock and appall didn’t even begin to cover it.

“Ms. Stark is—”

“A nice girl,” Sandor interrupted. “That doesn’t mean she’s good for a cold case. She’s not a cop or a detective or a crime scene investigator. Being sweet doesn’t factor into our line of work and it sure as shit doesn’t get you far.”

Make no mistake—Sansa was a _real nice_ girl; one Sandor would like to get to know on a more personal level. This was business, though, and what his dick wanted would have to be resolved outside the hallowed halls of the police station. Mixing business and pleasure was not a precedent he wanted to set. It would complicate things. As it stood, he wanted simple—to do this job, have a little fun with the town smoke show, and get the fuck out.

“It’s just not gonna work,” Sandor continued with more tact. “I’ll partner with other detectives, but I don’t work with psychics.”

Manderly took up the girl’s defense with red cheeks and as much pluckiness as Sandor had seen in him.

“Sansa’s leads have led to breaks in four cases. She’s a consummate professional and transparent about her limitations. She’s not like other psychics.”

Sandor rolled his eyes.

“They all say that. They come in with success stories and glowing reviews from police chiefs in whatever Bumfuck town they’re from where anyone with two brain cells to rub together could produce a logical lead to a case. And they claim a psychic vision for clout or to become the next Miss Cleo so they can defraud innocent people. Absolutely not. I won’t do it. Sorry.”

Chief looked primed for a coronary. He swallowed hard enough that Sandor saw his gullet bob. He’d have to walk it back again.

“Is it Ms. Stark? You don’t like her?”

“I like her just fine,” Sandor assured and meant it. “This isn’t a commentary on her as a person. It’s just a matter of principle. This is about how I do my work. And working with psychics is my redline.”

Unequivocal, Sandor didn’t mince words. Chief peered at him as if he had; not confused, just blindsided with brutal honesty and the surgical precision Sandor wielded in shutting this shit down.

“Okay?” Sandor pressed, but stood. He didn’t have time for this shit. Those junk emails wouldn’t clear themselves.

Manderly lifted his hands in acquiescence but had an ace up his sleeve. “I would at least consider it if I were you.”

Sandor sighed at the door, so close to waltzing out of here with the smug satisfaction that he’d dodged a tricky bullet. He turned slowly and planted his hands on his hips.

“Why?” he asked because Chief’s statement _almost_ felt like a warning.

“I know you’re not happy here. I know you feel out of your element and you’re counting down the days until you return to New York.”

Was it that obvious? Sandor almost asked, but then again, these walls had ears and Sandor had a literal countdown on his computer desktop. He’d absolutely made it that obvious.

“You’re a very talented detective and we’re pleased to have you,” Manderly continued. “But far be it from me to keep you from where you belong. If you can make significant progress on this cold case, I’d be willing to recommend your return to New York sooner than we agreed on.”

The man had Sandor’s attention. He knew it too. He turned to his computer with a faint smile.

“What are we talking? A month, two? How much sooner?”

The timing mattered. If Manderly was only willing to cut him loose a few weeks early, he could keep his gesture. It wasn’t worth it. Months could make a difference, though.

“As soon as you make progress on the case. I have a check-in with your Brooklyn precinct chief tomorrow. If you agree to work with Ms. Stark, I’ll agree to make that recommendation to him. Just something to think about. If you could give me an answer by the end of the day, I’d appreciate it,” he added with the nonchalance of a man who’d bested Sandor in the last seconds of a showdown.

Sandor returned to his desk, aware that Mildred watched him drift across the room. She waited for his eyes to land on her, probably so she could unload whatever one-liner she had in the chamber.

Sandor didn’t look but sunk in his seat and stared out the window. This knocked him off-kilter and sullied his routine. How was his workday going to crawl by now with this distraction?

Would it be the worst thing in the world to work with Sansa? Of course not. Would it be wise to work with her? Absolutely not. She’d distract him. Make his job harder. Make his dick harder.

Then again, here he was gazing out the window like some fucking Jane Austen character and thinking about her and, if he kept at it, his dick would get hard anyway. Distraction was already present, so he only had one option.

Reconnaissance.

Would it hurt to get a sense for this girl? Feel her out? See for himself what was inside of her? Get to the bottom of her being? Honestly, that was just good detective work and Sandor was nothing if not good at his job; so good, in fact, he already had a plan.

Chief hadn’t assigned who he wanted to “issue a warning,” but Sandor pegged himself as the right man for the job, abruptly stood from his desk, and grabbed up his coat and the keys to a patrol car. 

“I’ll be back later. Call if you need anything,” he announced and crossed the room in determined strides.

Mildred lifted her eyes from the scarf she knitted him in the Giants colors. “Give ’em hell, Mr. Big Shot.”

_Give ’em hell._

Give them something. Chief was a nice guy, but a push-over; too passive to dole out anything more severe than a disappointed look that could easily be misinterpreted as constipation.

Outside, Sandor hopped into the patrol vehicle and fired up the engine. As a detective, it wasn’t his norm to roll around with “NYPD” or anything else emblazoned on his car. This wasn’t so much about his detective duties as it was public service. He wasn’t here to rein in hoodlums or take reports about the raccoon ravaging trashcans, but he saw what needed to be done.

An hour and a half had been plenty of time to make the necessary stops—at home; the hardware store; the florist. Catelyn Stark had even texted him back with an answer to his question. A sweetheart of a woman, Sandor discerned clear as the bright blue sky where Sansa inherited her gentle charm and good looks.

The town’s clock tower tolled eleven. Sandor parked in front of the high school on the street that bordered the square, which was the size of a city block. It looked like a park with its tall trees and immaculately landscaped flower beds. Wooden benches lined stone-paved paths that wound through the lush scene. Its shining jewel was the statue of the town’s namesake, Cornelius Stark. He sat astride a horse and pointed toward Main Street on the other side of the square.

Sandor eyed the school’s old wooden doors and watched gawky teenage kids spilling out and bounding towards freedom with such sweet innocence. He cracked a smile and tried to remember what he might’ve gotten up to on an early release day. Trouble of some sort. Maybe. His father ran a tight ship. No leeway for missteps or toes out of line.

Leaned against the car, Sandor watched as the crowd dispersed towards school buses parked on one side of the building. The town was small enough that most walked home or rode their bikes. The kids in question eventually burst through the school doors and bisected the grassy quad out front. They shoved one another along the way, their backpacks hanging slack from their shoulders. That was a dead giveaway. The studious kids always lugged around backpacks bursting at the seams; puny kids hauling around what looked like boulders on their back, all hunched over and struggling.

The Reynolds kids apparently didn’t suffer the same affliction as they made for the town square. When they were within earshot, Sandor stood from the patrol vehicle.

“Hey!” he shouted and relished a bit too much how both kids veritably jumped out of their skin. Sandor fetched his badge from the inside pocket of his jacket. “NY…” He started but corrected himself as he flashed his badge. “Stark Fall Police Department.”

He tucked it away and motioned with two fingers for them to come over. The boys exchanged a glance and approached Sandor at a pace that gave molasses a run for its money.

“Hustle. I don’t have all day,” he barked, snatched up the palm-sized rock from the roof of the car, and held it up. “This look familiar to you?”

For a moment, they gaped at him and glanced at one another again. The dipshits didn’t plan a cover story, so they merely shrugged and let the long ends of their dark brown hair fall into their eyes. A couple of emo kids, they probably thought they were bad ass with their skintight band t-shirts and other Hot Topic bullshit. They reeked of axe body spray that failed miserably to mask cigarette smoke.

“Yeah, I see rocks every day, weirdo,” the kid with braces retorted and rolled his eyes. The one with straight teeth and bad acne erupted with laughter.

There was a reason Sandor didn’t have children and a reason he didn’t want them either. This shit—the sass; the back talk; the utter apathy.

“Laugh now, kid,” he warned and pointed at them in a gesture right out of his own father’s playbook. “I’ve got footage of you two with this rock that just happened to end up through a window at Sun and Moon. If you don’t believe me, we can take a little trip down to the station and you can see for yourself while I charge you for destruction of property.”

That seemed to shut them up. Out of laughs, they stared at the scuffed-up white caps of their untied Converse shoes.

“Are we in trouble?” one of them mumbled through the curtain of bangs and chewed on his lip ring.

“Mrs. Stark is a generous woman and won’t press charges, but that doesn’t mean the city can’t.”

Sandor waited and watched it sink in. Pale to begin with, they both lost the red to their cheeks and swallowed hard.

“I don’t know how Chief Manderly has been handling shit around here, but I ain’t him and I ain’t from here.” Sandor bid them to follow him to the trunk that he popped open. “Where I’m from, if you fuck with people on the block, you fix it. So, if you look in here, we got brooms and dustpans. You know what that means?”

Sandor rested one arm along the top of the open trunk. The boys had nothing to say. They fiddled with the straps of their empty backpacks and looked as though they probably would’ve preferred being charged and getting this shit over with.

“You’re gonna come with me and we’re gonna take a quick ride right over there.” Sandor pointed across town square to Main Street. “You’re gonna apologize to the Stark sisters, clean up the mess you made, and learn a lesson about fucking with innocent people in your town. Got it?”

There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot Sandor could do if they refused. The little assholes could laugh in his face, turn heel, and go about their day however they damn well pleased. Neither look poised to question it. In fact, it seemed this might be the only real run-in they had with “The Law” despite being obvious shit-starters.

Sandor slammed the trunk shut and flung open the back door of the patrol vehicle.

“Alright, get in,” he demanded, but softened his tone some. They were just kids. They’d likely grow out of this shit and learning a lesson was far more valuable in the long run than slapping them with a misdemeanor.

The ride was only two minutes, if that, but sufficiently awkward with the radio’s babbling and the silence on top. _Good._

“What are your names?” Sandor asked and matched braces boy’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He glared at Sandor and kept his metal mouth sealed.

“How long is this shit going to take?” the other whined and unzipped his backpack to pull out his cellphone. Unbeknownst to him, a white, hand rolled “cigarette” tumbled to the floor.

“As long as it needs to,” Sandor replied and eased down Main Street towards the shop. “You dropped your joint.”

Sandor looked on with absolute pleasure as the kid panicked, snatched his weed from the floor, and tucked it into his backpack as if Sandor hadn’t already seen. On the list of shit Sandor cared about, a little weed wasn’t it.

“I’ve got a World of Warcraft game at two,” the kid groused and slumped in the seat.

“Well, you should’ve thought about that before you threw a rock at that window,” Sandor reasoned and parallel parked outside the store. The shattered window was boarded up, the sight fuel to the fire of Sandor’s agitation. “You can play your little Harry Potter game later. I’m sure your wizard pals will survive without you.”

“God, you suck!” The pimply one was the whinier of the two, a petulant little brat and apparently the mouthpiece of the duo because the other nodded in emphatic agreement.

Sandor threw the patrol vehicle into park and spun around in his seat. “Watch your fucking mouth. I won’t tell you again, kid.”

Once more, memories of his father careened to the forefront of his mind; the “don’t make me pull this car over” vibe, the backseat bickering between Sandor and his brother with their poor little sister sandwiched between.

Just a stopgap in their endless griping, they both shut the hell up as Sandor climbed from the car and opened the back door to let them out. From the trunk, he handed off a broom and dustpan to each, but wasn’t done. There were more amends to make. Sandor retrieved the last bit from the passenger seat.

“Tweedle dee, you’ll give these to Arya.” He handed the pimply one a bouquet of purple roses, dark enough that they almost looked black and quite a feat to find.

“Tweedle dumbass, you’ll give this to Sansa.” Metal mouth got the tremendous honor of giving Sansa a bouquet of powder pink peonies, apparently her favorite flower.

Sandor followed as the kids dragged their feet into the shop. A trio of bells chimed as they stepped inside and drew Sansa’s attention from behind the counter.

As usual, the girl stunned. Her casual get-up betrayed the ass pain of last night, but her jeans hugged her curves just right and a black shirt did little to hide her tits that he’d thought of often. Sansa seemed intent to keep them on his mind as she leaned over the glass counter with the swell of those beautiful breasts on display. Truly, it was a remarkable sight.

Even her hair looked more mussed up than normal. She’d gathered half of it at the back of her head and secured it with a pencil. Sansa stood from the counter and her eyes darted between Sandor and the boys. The smile on her lips wasn’t for the kids, Sandor gathered. He smiled back.

Garbed head to toe in black, the little sister perched in the unbroken window and bathed like a cat in the sun.

“Ladies,” Sandor greeted and tipped his head to both with equal reverence, but his eyes returned to Sansa.

“Sandor! Wow. Hi,” she breathed and eased to the edge of the counter. Sandor knew bullshitters, but she seemed genuinely enthralled to see him again.

She tucked her hands in her back pockets, a stance that only further showcased her body. The more he stared at her, the more it sunk in. Sansa was hands-down the most gorgeous woman he’d ever laid eyes on. He often wondered what was so appealing about small towns. He understood now. If other places hid gems like Sansa Stark, it all made sense; beautiful women tucked away in no-name towns.

“What up?” the little one, Arya, piped up. As pleased as Sansa was to see him, Arya evened the scales with a blasé glance and her arms crossed tight over her chest.

Sandor never would’ve pegged them as sisters. Not a chance. They looked entirely mismatched—one tall, the other short; one with long auburn hair and distinctly feminine features of plush lips, doe eyes, and porcelain skin; the other with jet black hair barely sweeping her shoulders and sharper features of narrowed eyes, a long chin, and freckles dusted across her nose and cheeks. Not only that, but their demeanors were also night and day.

Just last night, Sansa had regarded Sandor as if he were some knight in shining armor galloping up on a horse (or a leather jacket and Mustang, in his case), to save them. Meanwhile, the little one groused about cheese fries and the cold and threatened to add whoever did this to her shit list. Sandor suspected that list was far more literal than pejorative. Sansa beamed. Arya brooded. Sun and Moon, indeed.

Dumb and dumber shifted uncomfortably next to Sandor. One peered out the window with an obvious desire to make a run for it.

“I heard you’re not interested in pressing charges against these two,” Sandor said and glanced at Arya when she stirred. 

“Don’t look at me! It’s this bleeding heart who didn’t want to.”

Arya flung one hand to Sansa and glowered at the kids who Sandor realized now seemed terrified of the little sister. She was small but mighty and worthy of fear as she stared daggers at them.

“You two are lucky my sister is the sweet one,” Arya raged. “I would’ve happily watched the hammer finally fall on you both.”

Sandor chuckled at that. The tiny wisp of a girl wasn’t to be trifled with. He took note.

“Well, they’re here to set things straight.” Sandor clapped pizza face on the shoulder and nudged him in Arya’s direction. Metal mouth took his cue. “Go on.”

With his arms folded over his chest, Sandor supervised as they each handed off the bouquets.

Metal mouth apologized first and handed the flowers to Sansa who graciously accepted with a sympathetic smile.

“We’re sorry,” he whispered. This one was shaping up to be the brains between the two. He had enough sense to at least feign contrition.

“Sorry,” the other grumbled and handed the flowers to Arya whose gaze bore into the kid. Unmoved by the gesture, she tossed the flowers to the windowsill. A few dark petals dislodged and drifted to the polished wood floor.

“What else?” Sandor prompted, because these kids sure as hell wouldn’t do it on their own. Metal mouth couldn’t stop staring at Sansa, and the other avoided Arya’s penetrating gaze at all costs.

“We’re here to clean up,” one of them mumbled. Sandor didn’t know who. It didn’t matter. Sansa was smiling sweetly at him. These dipshits could pocket sage sticks and crystal balls, and Sandor probably wouldn’t notice for the way his gaze was perpetually drawn to her.

“Get to it then.” Sandor motioned to the boarded-up window where bits of glass still gleamed on the floor and tables. “Start over there.”

It looked like the girls had done their best in a cursory clean-up, but they’d roped off the area that housed jewelry and baskets of scarfs, an unfortunate place for hidden glass.

The boys went to work. Sandor didn’t have to give orders. Arya hopped from the windowsill, marched over, and fired off a list of things that needed to be done. She put the fear of God into those kids in a way Sandor couldn’t quite manage.

It wasn’t only impressive, but convenient too, and freed up Sandor to pursue his interests. Right now, that was seizing another opportunity to talk to Sansa—flirt a little, laugh a little, maybe ask her out. He’d see how it went. There was plenty of time for that. Sandor leaned against the counter across from Sansa.

“Nice place.”

No word of a lie, it was a nice little shop; not his bag, but he could understand the appeal of pretty rocks in a rainbow of colors, weird little knives and bells and other odd trinkets, books about wild topics he’d never heard of. One on sex magick stood out. He didn’t know what the hell that meant, but Sansa Stark was a helpful sort of girl. Maybe she’d be up for showing him the ropes.

It smelled nice too. That was the first thing he noticed. It was hard not to, though he couldn’t quite place it—herbal like lavender and rosemary with the sweet smoke of burning wood; not the scent of cheap gas station incense he might’ve expected.

Sandor hated to admit it, but it was calming, or perhaps that was Sansa’s company. He felt at ease around her, a strange development considering a girl like her should’ve left him tongue-tied and stupid and ultimately reticent enough that she might’ve assumed he was uninterested. He considered himself a confident man, but women like Sansa Stark typically put his swagger through a stress test.

“Thank you.”

She tossed her hair behind her shoulders. Did she do it on purpose? Her breasts were on full display now. Sandor’s eyes settled there. A red-blooded man, he appreciated the look.

“How did you get them to do this?” Sansa asked and her gaze momentarily shifted to the kids. One plucked glass from a bowl of coins with holes in the middle and the other cleared off a table.

When she returned her gaze to him, Sansa’s eyes landed on his mouth. Her attention on him was still polite, though something racy and seductive paced the cage of that courtesy. It just needed to be unleashed. And that’s where Sandor found himself suddenly inspired to be helpful too.

“My own magic.” He matched her eyes and deliberately lowered his voice. She seemed to like that. It had a way of beckoning a smile and reddening her cheeks. 

“Oh yeah?” She folded her arms on the counter and leaned forward, hellbent on testing his focus. “And what’s that?”

_Focus. Amazing tits. Goddamn. Nope. Focus. Beautiful face. Blue eyes._

He kept her stare. A relatively simple thing to do, she was so fucking pretty. “Threats.”

But now his eyes strayed. They could not be tamed. Neither could his thoughts. He eyed her totality with heat sweeping over him.

_Lips. Kiss. Lick. Suck. Pretty around my cock. Breasts, beautiful breasts. Supple. Soft. No, not soft. Getting hard. Harder. Stop. Stop it._

Sansa’s lips bloomed with a smile. Damn. He wondered if she knew. She was a psychic. Why the hell hadn’t it occurred to him until now? Could she read his thoughts? Whatever. He knew what he was about, and it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if she knew it too. _God, I wanna fuck you. Get you wet and have you ride my dick. You hear that?_

“Ah, yes,” she giggled. “How could I forget the very ancient tradition of threats?”

Quick as a whip, she got it. The banter with her flowed easy and unobstructed by awkward laughter, blank stares, or a reaction coming just a beat too late. He’d dated chicks too slow on the draw; the rhythm syncopated and sending everything askew and just slightly off, like an erratic jazz beat that just got exhausting after a while. Not her. Sansa understood the beat of his humor and picked up the rhythm. Theirs was a lovely harmony.

Her red manicured fingertips caressed a peony petal. “I assume this is your doing. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Sandor said with a shrug.

The arrangements were well worth it, if nothing more than the look on her face now as she gazed fondly at the bouquet. Sandor had bungled his fair share of would-be romances, but he had his moments.

“How did you know these are my favorite flowers?” Sansa asked with obvious intrigue.

“Lucky guess,” he cracked and lifted a brow at her. She didn’t buy it, of course. Sansa tossed him a saucy little look of dubiousness, flirtation on the rise. “Might be I’ve got a source inside your family.”

She liked that bit. Sandor had easily picked up on how tightly knit the Stark family was. Like a pack of wolves, they stuck together and took care of their own.

“My mother,” Sansa laughed and eyed the bouquet with fresh appreciation.

“I don’t reveal my sources.” Sandor flashed a wry smile before relenting. “I sent her flowers too. She said she was out and about today, so they’ll come to her house.”

A smooth move, it wasn’t manipulative or a staged tactic. He genuinely felt bad for these women and the nuisance of a broken window. The flowers were meant to be a nice touch. Touching, they were, apparently. Sansa stared at him as if admiring something about him, not his height, or hair, or the good side of his face. Something else. The intangible. It felt nice to be admired this way. It didn’t happen often.

“I better be careful what I say about you then. You know since we’ve got a mole in the family. They might reveal my secrets to you,” she joked with a gentleness that appealed.

In both his own life and what he witnessed in others, Sandor had known so much hardness, the cold bitterness of being dealt a rough hand, the way life sliced and diced until it either put an edge on people or they bled out from the indiscriminate cruelty. The women he had been with mirrored Sandor’s sharp edges and had been just as battle-tested. He hadn’t quite encountered anyone like Sansa with such soft grace and tenderness she gave for free.

He wanted to touch her. His fingers loosely curled to his palms instead. It was more than that, though. He also wanted _her_ to touch _him_ in new ways worth fantasizing about, ways that fulfilled a different need and sated another sort of hunger—her fingertips caressing his scars; her body pressed warm and serene against his; her arms eager for him. All this time, he hadn’t realized the gentleness he craved.

Sansa bit her bottom lip and Sandor swore she might’ve even fluttered her dark, thick lashes at him. Classic flirtation, timeless moves. That was the other thing he found irresistible about her. She didn’t employ guerrilla tactics on him—sneaky moves and cryptic lines that left him perpetually wondering whether he even had a shot. She put it all out there with glowing smiles, bubbling laughter, and dreamy gazes.

Sandor responded in-kind with his own upfront transparency. He eased forward towards her and laughed. “Oh yeah? What are those secrets?”

Across the counter, Sansa leaned towards him, close enough he could smell the sweet, lemony scent of her perfume. Tit-for-tat, if he ran the ball, she’d pick it up and keep going. Now _this_ was give and take.

“They wouldn’t be secrets if I told you.” She kept his eyes and dropped her voice. In the beat of silence where they simply gazed at one another, Arya gave another round of orders across the room. “Besides, there are too many people here. It’s not the right place to reveal them,” Sansa added and tipped her head to her sister.

Her stare became heavy with deliberate weight. Her lips parted in breathless anticipation. He knew this look. Oh yes, he knew what this meant. She was giving him the signal. It was his move.

_Ask her out. Do it. Ask her._

She set it up. It was perfect. She pitched him a meatball, middle of the plate, even and speedy. All he had to do was utter his line— _maybe you can tell me over dinner._ Boom. Out of the park. She’d even loaded the bases for him. But no, someone wandered in. The bells chimed. A broad heaved up to the counter, giving zero fucks that Sandor was here and that this was a pivotal moment in a very important conversation.

“Hi Sansa,” the lady interrupted, shouldered Sandor out of the way, and tossed some hideous patchwork purse to the counter. “I need more palo santo.”

Sansa gave Sandor a crestfallen smile, the disappointment and irritation blatant on her features. The poor thing. It was a disappointment for them both.

“I’ll let you get to it.” Sandor rapped his knuckles against the counter and paid the old bag a terse smile.

He would not be cowed by a woman who smelled like moth balls and was covered in cat hair. Sandor winked at Sansa; an unspoken signal that this was far from over. He would prevail. He would find out what her secrets were because he suspected they might very well be that she wanted to fuck him too. He would blow her mind in bed, treat her right, do things to her she probably only ever fantasized about. He’d impress her mother, win over her sister, and yes, he would date the hell out of her. _Don’t you worry, little bird._

Sandor assumed the mantle supervising the kids who’d largely swept up the glass from the floor and commenced the tedious undertaking of picking shards from every conceivable nook and cranny.

Settled in the corner, Sandor took another moment to study the shop. The place wasn’t what he expected; or at least half of it wasn’t. They advertised tarot readings with Sansa and aura readings with Arya. That was to be expected; so too were the rocks and books and other accoutrements of the New Age.

But then there were things like that sex magick book, and the rows of candles shaped like dicks, apparently for fertility; dicks of all sizes and colors; dicks that the two kids refused to go near. Bits of glass glittered around the balls at the front half of the display.

“You missed a spot.” Sandor leveled his gaze at metal mouth and pointed to the dicks. 

The two stared at each other in a game of chicken. Who was going to budge first? Neither apparently.

Sandor rolled his eyes and groaned, “Jesus Christ, they’re made of wax. You can tag team the dicks, but get it done.”

They didn’t seem to like that. They glowered at him, geminal in their hatred, but obeying as they swept up glass from the table and around the display of candle cocks.

Another customer breezed into the store—some tall blonde with two kids in tow. She squirted their hands with hand sanitizer and instructed them not to touch anything. She looked like she shopped exclusively at Talbots and her kids existed on a diet of organic, non-GMO, gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan snacks and not much else.

“Sansa! What happened? Oh my God!” the woman yapped and kissed Sansa on each cheek. “I heard about the window and I had to come over right away. I’ve been meaning to stop by for the jasper stones you said you got in.”

Mothball lady looked on with sympathy and ran a wrinkly hand through Sansa’s hair. Everyone in this town loved Sansa Stark. What wasn’t there to love? They raved about her, waxed poetic, muttered her name with heartfelt veneration.

Sandor watched as Sansa fluttered to a large glass display with bowls of rocks in all different colors, shapes, and sizes. She graciously listened as the blonde prattled on about a blocked chakra and bent over to pluck a few rocks from the bottom shelf. Perhaps on purpose, she offered him another delicious view of her cleavage.

Yes, indeed, very fine breasts; full and so nicely shaped. Her skin looked soft too. They’d bounce so nicely as he fucked her from behind, or maybe up against a wall where they’d crush against his chest. Sandor imagined the logistics. She was tall, but he was strong. It’d be no problem to sling those long legs around his hips and hoist her up. God, they’d be good together. He didn’t have to guess.

The movement in Sandor’s periphery halted, apparently riveted in the same direction. Sandor glanced to where metal mouth should’ve been digging for glass bits. Instead, he gaped at Sansa. Sandor couldn’t blame the kid. He remembered what it was like to be full of hormones but lacking subtlety. Whereas Sandor snuck glances, the kid full-on stared as if he had never seen a pair of tits before.

“Hey!” Sandor scolded as quietly as he could and snapped his fingers to break the kid’s iron focus on Sansa. “Eyes off. Get back to work.”

“What? You look at her,” the kid grumbled.

“That’s different. I actually got a shot. Your balls haven’t even dropped yet.”

The other one busted up with laughter. His already red and irritated cheeks deepened with crimson and his voice cracked.

“What are you laughing at, squeaky?” Sandor snapped.

That shut the kid up and fast too. He wasn’t laughing anymore. Poised to whine, he launched more attitude at Sandor with a sneer and then a glare.

“You don’t have to be a fucking dick all the time,” he mouthed off.

Sandor knew he shouldn’t engage. It’d go nowhere. Besides, these kids weren’t his responsibility. Who the hell cared if they were little twerps with attitude problems? If they were universally known as the town hellions, this probably wouldn’t be his last run-in with them.

Sandor pointed his finger at the kid. “You speak to your mother with a mouth like that? Show some respect.”

“You show it.” The kid dragged the broom across the floor and sighed. “Can we be done now?”

When Arya reappeared, they both stood at attention and eyed her warily, as if she’d turn them into frogs or maybe one of these dick candles if they moved.

“You’re done when she says you are,” Sandor replied and motioned to Arya.

She silently walked around each table, scanned the shelves for glass, and, after a few very long minutes, gave a curt nod.

“Alright, you’re done.”

The boys expelled dual sighs of relief and gathered up the brooms and dustpans.

Arya cut a look sodden with sarcasm at Sandor. “You really have a way with them.”

Sandor shrugged and stared down at the girl who was barely pushing five-foot-two. He towered over her. “Not all of us can be as imposing as you are.”

“Chin up. You’ll get there someday, sport.” She nudged him with her elbow and wandered off.

Sandor had hoped for another word with Sansa, but dumb and dumber barreled for the door and helicopter mom still yammered about her compost pile. Poor Sansa politely nodded and listened, and waved goodbye to Sandor like she wanted to say more too. Oh well. Another time, he supposed.

Outside, Sandor popped the trunk of the patrol vehicle and the kids tossed the brooms and dust pans inside. It was a wonder they didn’t bolt down the street. They could’ve and Sandor half-expected them to. Instead, they stared at him as if he might say something to them. What the fuck was he supposed to say?

In times like this, the best he could do was level with people. These two would probably straighten out with age. He’d seen what truly hopeless youths looked like, and it wasn’t this.

“Okay, you did well in there,” Sandor began and channeled his paternal instinct, what little of it there was. “Let me give you some advice. Don’t be an asshole. You can be a prick. Sometimes I’m a prick, but you earn that right with age and showing respect where it’s due, especially to women. But assholes? No one likes assholes.”

“Some people like assholes,” metal mouth snickered.

To be fair, it was an important caveat. Man or woman, there was nothing wrong with getting down on ass here and there.

“Alright, fair point,” Sandor conceded. “You can eat ass, but don’t be an ass. There you go. That’s your lesson. You can put that on a bumper sticker. Stay in school and don’t back talk your mother. Get the fuck outta here and I don’t wanna see you doing shit like this again, understood?”

They both nodded. Sandor would’ve offered them a ride back to school, but they sprinted down the street towards the square. They’d had enough of him. Sandor didn’t know what to expect; certainly not a “Gee whiz, thanks Mister!”

“God, that guy’s a loser!” one of them shouted loud enough for Sandor to hear.

“Idiot!” the other chimed in. Sandor cracked a smile.

He made it back to the station just as his phone chimed with a text message. He expected it to be Mildred or Nathan wondering where he was. Shit like this wouldn’t fly in Brooklyn. He couldn’t even take a leak without his phone blowing up about where the hell he was.

Moth to a flame (or so he hoped), Sansa’s name appeared on the screen and Sandor lit up like a goddamn Christmas tree. He tried not to. What for, though? No one was here to see him giddy like some fucking teenage kid again. And so what if they were?

**_Thank you again for the flowers and for bringing them by to clean up! It helped a lot. (This is Sansa, btw. Now you’ve got my number…)_ **

He already had her number, already saved it in his phone. In fact, he’d slammed that “Create New Contact” button the night she called him. 

_Dot. Dot. Dot._

That was a very interesting ellipsis, the texting equivalent to leaving the door open a crack, the sentence incomplete, unfilled. He’d fill it in; could fill in a lot of things for her. Sandor’s smile broadened. His cheeks ached, in fact. That never happened. He tapped out a response.

**_My pleasure. I look forward to seeing you at the festival…_ **

He wasn’t good at texting. Should he add an emoji? There were too many to choose from. Who the hell had this emotional range to necessitate all these emojis?

Smiley face? Nope. That was for chumps. Thumbs up? Terrible. Cheesy. Winky face? Worst idea yet; only slime balls who pinched girls’ asses at bars used that one. 

No emojis. That dilemma was easy to clear, but there was another, more important one. He had a burning question for her but asking it in a text wasn’t his style. It seemed cowardly. And if she said no, she said no, and at least he’d have his answer. Text messages left a third option on the table—no response at all.

The festival. He’d see her there. That settled it. He’d ask her then, to her face, like a real man. That didn’t stop him from keeping the dot, dot, dot at the end of his text, though. Two could leave the door open on this one and he fired off the text, but a question remained. What exactly had he learned on this reconnaissance mission? He’d forgotten that bit, completely failed to consider getting a sense of what it’d be like to work with her.

And that was his answer.

She drove him wild. She distracted him. She made his dick hard and mind race. Even now, hurrying up the steps of the police station, Sandor couldn’t tear his thoughts from her—the shape of her body, the sound of her voice, the way her full lips broke with smiles she gave just for him. He’d get fuck-all done if they worked together.

As the afternoon slipped by, Sandor reasoned it was for the best to stand firm in his refusal. He’d solve the case by himself. He didn’t need help. What he needed was to hold the line between personal and professional interests and a moment to ask her out.

At the end of the day, Sandor gathered up his belongings with the satisfaction that he could have his cake and eat it too. And what a sweet, lovely cake it was. On the way out, he knocked at Manderly’s door.

“Chief,” Sandor said when the man lifted his eyes. “Count me out on working with Sansa Stark. I’ll handle the case on my own.”

That settled it. Sandor even gave a nod to punctuate his refusal. Manderly didn’t respond. He just laughed. Really, it was more a guffaw that seemed to say, _“We’ll see about that.”_

In the end, Manderly said nothing at all, and Sandor left the station with the distinct feeling that he wasn’t in charge. Sure, he sat his happy ass in the driver’s seat of his own life, but the universe dictated the break-neck speed at which he barreled past those signposts that all said the same thing when it came to Sansa Stark:

Buckle up, asshole. All bets are off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! This chapter and next were supposed to be one, but it’d gotten too long so I split them up. We’ll see what happens at the Founders Festival next chapter… 😏
> 
> I hope you’re enjoying the story! If you are, please let me know!


	4. Superstition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I tried a little something new with this chapter! I hope you enjoy and please let me know what you think! ❤️

“What are you reading?” Mildred asked Sandor, though she knew damn well.

At his desk, he hadn’t tried to hide how he passed the time. The hardbound book smelled like the library and the pages were thick, the ink pleasantly printed, and the words captivating.

Sandor waggled the tome and didn’t bother reading the title. Mildred could see just fine.

_A History of Stark Fall._

On Wednesday, Sandor popped into the library for research on a cold case. The book caught his eye. It sat at the corner of an empty table as if he were meant to find it. In fact, he could’ve sworn it hadn’t been there when he settled at an adjacent table with a stack of microfiche printouts.

Sandor wasn’t much for reading, and certainly not a book this size. Even now, he couldn’t say why he grabbed it up and went through the hassle of getting a library card to check it out. The cover wasn’t all that interesting—black with gold lettering and a celestial border. He didn’t know the author, only that it was another Stark.

“That’s Sansa’s father,” Mildred kindly informed with a wry smile. 

Sandor flipped the book around. “Ned Stark?”

She nodded.

_Interesting._

This was perhaps the first library book he’d checked out in his adult life and Sandor assumed it’d go forgotten and rack up late fees.

Instead, he found himself oddly engrossed by it, enough that he blazed through about a chapter a night. That was an impressive feat worthy of celebration. Celebrate, he did.

With the book on his nightstand, Sandor would think about Sansa until his dick was hard, and he’d stroke himself to the thought of sliding his length inside of her or perhaps her beautiful mouth wrapped around his cock. His release would come quick and hard, and he’d fall into blissful sleep.

Only now, that sleep exploded with wild visions and endless dreams about whatever he’d read in this damn book. In one, he was a mercenary in Stark Fall during the Revolutionary War. In another, he had a long conversation with Sansa about witchcraft and how she worked her spells. Even in his slumberous state, he’d thought to ask if she put a love spell on him. She only laughed and Sandor woke up before he got his answer.

And now his bedtime ritual would be ruined because instead of seeing some ambiguous Stark on the book cover, he’d be reminded this was Sansa’s dad…on his nightstand…while he jacked off to thoughts of the man’s daughter.

“That was him,” Mildred added and fussed with a tangle of yarn.

Sandor noted the past tense. “Was.”

“He died in a car accident five years ago,” she divulged on a hush as if it were better left unsaid.

Sansa hadn’t mentioned it. Then again, their flirtatious tête-à-têtes weren’t conducive to such somber fare.

“I’m really sorry to hear that.”

The book now felt heavier in Sandor’s hands and a shadow seemed to pass over Mildred. 

“He was a good man. Honorable, loyal, and obviously very invested in this town.” She tipped her head to the book. “It was an awful day when he died.”

Sandor expelled a sigh. He didn’t know what else to say. All the things that came to mind were better meant for Sansa and her family. As a cop, he’d delivered bad news to strangers more times than he cared to count. His condolences were always sincere, but he suspected people didn’t want to hear from him, not unless he could bring their loved one back.

Sandor closed the book and changed the subject because the mood had shifted too suddenly, and that morose cloud threatened to linger.

“So, this Founders Festival, it’s a Halloween thing,” he declared more than asked.

“No.”

The response was resounding. Nathan lifted his head from his work long enough to join the chorus with Mildred. The festival fell on Halloween and that seemed rather convenient if you asked him. No one did, so Sandor shut up about it.

“It’s a very important day for the Starks,” Nathan said. “Almost a memorial for their ancestors and those they lost too soon.”

This information would’ve been nice before Sandor made a Halloween safety pamphlet with shit no one in this town cared about—checking candy for drugs and needles; being on the lookout for creepy men lurking around; watching for traffic. Only city dwellers cared about that sort of thing.

It was a tongue-in-cheek gesture. A joke. Something to pass the time. It looked deliberately shitty too—all Comic Sans font with low-res and deep-fried clip art, enormous amounts of awkward white space, and obnoxious colors.

Chief loved it. Nathan and Harold suggested they hand them out at the Founders Festival. Mildred understood the humor. She was complicit. Sandor included her suggestion about reminding people to close any portals to hell they opened.

And now Sandor felt like a jackass. He’d made the pamphlets before he knew the significance of the Founders Festival. He had assumed it was just a town circle-jerk where the Mayor would haul his hefty ass to a microphone for some canned speech about how amazing he was. Sandor had seen it before—political posturing and self-aggrandizing against the backdrop of fried food and carnival rides.

This festival wasn’t that, though. Of course, it wasn’t. This town was too wholesome for that, and Sandor was too late to convince Manderly that the pamphlets really weren’t that great. What was done was done. Maybe no one would notice.

Sandor returned to reading and, per usual for a Friday, the office cleared out early. He lost himself in the book again. It beckoned with almost infuriating insistence, as if an answer to a question he hadn’t asked laid hidden in its pages.

After the others left, Mildred shuffled to his desk.

“I’ll close up,” Sandor muttered, his eyes still glued to the page. “See you tomorrow.”

His parting words didn’t inspire departure. Mildred remained rooted. “Why that book?”

The question lacked Mildred’s typical dry wit and zippy snark. He admired those qualities in her and found them kindred in a way. The old lady had quickly become his favorite co-worker.

Sandor lifted his gaze and Mildred peered at him through her glasses.

“Why not?” he answered with a shrug. “I just saw it on a table as I was leaving the library. I thought it sounded interesting.”

He left out the show-stopping detail. The book hadn’t initially been on the table. Sandor was sure of it now. He would’ve noticed. He’d been within eyesight of that table the whole time, and the library wasn’t exactly crawling with people. _Weird._

“Of all books to show up in your life,” Mildred casually remarked and tugged on her gloves.

“Yeah, coincidence, I guess.”

It was a throwaway statement, just something to fill dead air and punctuate the end of a conversation. In the dimly lit office, Mildred stared at him with a knowing smile.

“Oh honey, nothing that happens in this town is a coincidence.”

* * *

On Saturday morning, dense fog rolled down the street with such strange effect that Sandor stood at his living room window watching it move as if it had a purpose and a destination. That destination was apparently the town square. Sandor arrived early, before the crowds packed in.

An already sleepy town, the blanket of fog and dew-dropped grass only rendered the place eerie with its quiet enchantment. A volunteer pointed Sandor to the south end of the square where the police department’s table sat beneath an old oak tree. Not just any oak tree, of course. The stout trunk, thick limbs, and lush canopy said this was no ordinary tree. It was _the_ oak of Stark Fall legend.

Sandor crossed the square. Leaves crunched beneath his boots and he approached the ancient oak with new appreciation and reverie that surprised even him. When he was sure no one was looking, Sandor inspected the tree’s base until he spotted the odd sigil of intersecting circles and lines. He squatted in front of it and traced his index finger along the carved letters and numbers.

_C.S. 1714_

“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” he whispered and stood with an unintended smile.

Harold arrived not long after the sun dissipated the fog. A bright blue day, the air was cool and thin, but the sun’s warmth ultimately triumphed. The old trees that towered over the square burst in a kaleidoscope of fall colors. For the better part of the morning, Harold manned the table while Sandor redirected traffic away from Main Street.

The whole affair was a mash-up of a farmer’s market with stands of seasonal produce from local farmers, a fall festival with the pumpkin patch, hayrides, corn maze, and pie contest, and a carnival with games, face painting, and balloon animals. The police department shut down the square’s perimeter to make room for food vendors and informational tables for the businesses and public services.

Like everything else in this place, the Founders Festival was annoyingly adorable. The air smelled like apple cider donuts with cinnamon and sugar wafting on the crisp breeze. People politely waited in lines, greeted each other with handshakes and smiles, and infused the vibe with an endless supply of exuberant cheer.

Around noon, Harold took over traffic duty.

“Sun and Moon’s table is next to ours. Sansa Stark is there,” the man casually mentioned.

Sandor already knew and didn’t bother to look surprised. He wished Harold luck and made his way through throngs of people to man the table but slowed his pace towards the square. He needed to get his game face on. This was serious. Of course, there’d be flirting, banter, the whole nine, but he’d already talked a big game and now was the time to walk the walk and ask Sansa out.

Halfway across the square and past a stand of autumn squash, Sandor evaluated his outfit—good, not great. He’d been forced into a department-issued jacket with Stark Fall PD patches sewn onto either shoulder. It was a horrendous shade of dark brown with tan trim, but he’d talked Chief out of having to wear the matching pants. Sandor wasn’t a patrol officer, partially because he couldn’t stand wearing the polyester uniform that chaffed something fierce.

In the very least, he got to wear the jeans that made his ass look good and his motorcycle boots that he purposely polished last night. Hopefully, Sansa liked a man in uniform from the top-up. If not, he’d only be halfway disappointing and what he was working with on the bottom half was more likely to impress anyway. Win-win.

It was a good thing he left his hair down and took extra time with it today, enough that it looked soft and shiny. Women loved his hair—the color, the length, the sheen. He didn’t care about other women, though; only what one particular woman thought about it.

That particular woman seemed to like it well enough that her pretty mouth erupted with a smile when she saw him break through the crowd. The danger—if Sansa kept smiling at him like this, his ego would inflate past its optimum level. Sandor likened it to car tires; under-inflated and over-inflated were equally disastrous. With age, he’d settled into a happy medium, but a woman like Sansa looking at him like she was now with glittering eyes and cheeks faintly flush and paying him a breathless little laugh was pumping him up.

Sandor puffed out his chest and strutted up to the table. He flicked his aviators to the top of his head just as the wind swept through his hair. Sansa eyed it with a not-so-subtle desire to run her fingers through it, perhaps. She could run her fingers through, along, and around anything she damn-well pleased on his body.

He hadn’t known what to expect from the Stark women at this festival and hadn’t seen Arya or Catelyn, but Sansa looked like a proper witch minus the broom stick and black hat. A well-cut black jacket blessedly fell just above her ass that looked like perfection in the tight black pants she wore. Long auburn waves framed her face and her red rouged lips curled in a bright smile.

“Hey,” she sighed, a breath of relief. “You made it. I was getting worried it’d be me and Harold all day.”

“Little bird.” He tipped his head to her with a rugged smile. She seemed to like the nickname. At least, he assumed, given the way she beamed at him. “I’ve come to rescue you.”

Sandor eyed the long rows of tables extending this side of the square. Other tables sold their wares and handed out free shit—pencils and stickers and what not. The Stark Fall PD table had Sandor’s pamphlet of trolling and ballpoint pens emblazoned with “Stark Fall Police Department” and a fucking teddy bear wearing a uniform. It looked barren and meager next to Sun and Moon’s table.

Garbed in a black cloth with an overlay of lace, Sansa’s table displayed an assortment of polished stones in all shapes, colors, and sizes. Behind the table, lotions, oils, and soaps with Sun and Moon’s branding lined the shelves of an antique china cabinet. The cabinet’s drawers were left open to reveal a rainbow of candles inside.

“Pretty,” Sandor commented sincerely, but his gaze settled on Sansa.

She didn’t seem to expect it. Her eyes grew big, and lips parted with dead words or ones she couldn’t remember. She responded with a little giggle, small shrug, and timid smile.

“What? These or…” She motioned to the table.

Sandor laughed. He understood, though. Nothing was more embarrassing than assuming a compliment is meant for you, only to find out someone was complimenting an inanimate object in your vicinity. He’d make it abundantly clear.

Sandor sat at the edge of his table that was decidedly less populated with pretty things.

“You and the rocks.” 

Facing him, Sansa stepped into the space between their tables too. She gathered her hair over one shoulder. That was her tell. Everyone had a nervous tell—foot taps, mouth clicks, nail bites. Hers were simple, sexy, inadvertently seductive—she played with her hair, bit her bottom lip, and dropped her head enough that, when she glanced at him again, she did so through her lashes. The holy trinity, she did all three now. This was going to be a good day.

“Thank you. You are…I mean…” Sansa mirrored his stance and perched at the edge of her table. A _very_ good day.

Sandor lifted one brow. “Pretty?”

“I like the look.”

Her fingertips lightly brushed his elbow as she admired the jacket. That settled it. She liked a man in uniform. Maybe she’d like him out of it too. He’d find out later.

“What do they do?”

Sandor motioned to the rocks on her table. He didn’t believe in that sort of stuff, but it wasn’t like it didn’t intrigue him. If nothing else, asking about it was an excuse to hear Sansa talk.

“They each have different healing properties,” she explained. “People can carry them with them, make charms out of them, leave them in parts of their house. Some are good for chakra openings.”

Sandor nodded, but admired her red lips. He’d heard of chakras. Anyone who lived in Brooklyn long enough had. At some point, the unassuming borough had become overrun with hipsters from the Midwest and California. They drank expensive cocktails with increasingly contrived ingredients, listened to indie music that absolutely no one else on earth had heard of, and talked about chakras and other shit. Why the hell they couldn’t have descended on Queens instead was beyond him.

Sandor leaned forward. With the heels of her hands pressed against the edge of her table, Sansa did the same.

“Chakra opening,” he repeated with intentional grit to his voice and weight behind his gaze. “Are yours open?”

Sandor worked tremendously hard not to stare between her legs. The girl had incredible thighs, and what was between them was probably no less incredible.

The lip bite came again, and then her smile. Sandor suspected Sansa like being talked dirty to. “Well, not right now.”

A miracle, he kept her eyes. They looked a brighter blue today, and the sunlight danced in her hair too. She dazzled, luminous like no one he’d ever encountered before.

“How does one open them?” Sandor teased.

Eventually, he was going to reach her boundaries. This might have cut dangerously close, but something new joined Sansa’s holy trinity—a deadpan stare with determination in her eyes and mischief on her beautiful mouth.

“One at a time.” She kept his eyes too in a coy look and the corner of her lips upturned in not quite a smile but close. “Slowly. Tenderly.”

_Oh fuck. Don’t lose the thread._ Sandor ran one hand over his mouth. His heart picked up rhythm and his blood pumped hot.

“Hmm.” The rumble from his chest sounded like a moan. “Intensely? Deeply?”

It was very clear they weren’t talking about chakras anymore. Sansa’s lips parted. She leaned forward enough that Sandor could see beneath the loose fabric of her sweater to her luscious breasts and the lace of a black bra that showcased them so nicely.

“Any way you want it,” she taunted on a murmur. “So, if that’s how you want it…”

It wasn’t often—if ever—a woman rendered Sandor this way; not just mesmerized, but he felt the heat at his neck. It poured down his back and surfaced beneath the skin. Was it hotter out here? He was burning up. His breaths picked up their pace too. Breathless. Was this girl seriously leaving him breathless?

Detective Sandor Clegane who once chased a perp on foot five city blocks, hopping over cabs, dodging hot dog venders and homeless dudes on the street; who raided a mob-run card room, cuffed the Don, and brought him down to the precinct for charges; who’d been shot at, spit on, sucker punched, and stabbed and yet, this girl—this gorgeous, funny, apple pie, small town sweetheart of a girl—was leaving him feeling like his knees might give out and someone better be on standby in case his heart stopped beating.

He swallowed hard and tamed his hands that wanted to touch, tease, please, and thrill her. Fuck, she could have anything she wanted from him.

“That’s how I want it,” Sandor barely managed on a broken exhale. 

He meant everything. Yes, he wanted to fuck her; dear God, please, if nothing else, he wanted one night of absolute ecstasy with her. More than that, he wanted to get to know her; wanted to hear her back story, what her family was like, what her dreams and hopes and fears were; he wanted to listen to her, make her laugh, kiss her, hold her, be near her.

Sansa must’ve known. The heat dissipated between them but didn’t leave them out in the cold. Far from it, it eased to a nice warmth that wasn’t burning him up anymore. It was the kind to curl up and get cozy in; the kind that was blissful in its own right, enough to feel safe and settle in to.

Sansa smiled again and Sandor did too. As if intoxicated or perhaps bewitched, he was suddenly giddy—head swimming, heart pounding, hopes soaring.

“Do you make all those?” He tipped his head to the lotions lined up, their glass bottles of red, green, and blue gleaming like jewels in the sunlight.

“Yes. My mom grows the ingredients in her garden.” Sansa stood from the table and approached the display. “She’s been doing it for a long time. My sister and I help now. Do you want to try?”

Sandor wasn’t really a lotion kind of guy and definitely not scented lotions, but Sansa could do just about anything she damn well pleased to him and he would probably beg for more.

“Sure,” he agreed with a shrug.

Sansa’s hand hovered in front of the shelf. “Pick a color.”

“Red,” he answered immediately. It was quickly unseating green to become his favorite.

Sansa returned to the middle ground between their tables. When she presented the bottle, Sandor held out his palms without a second thought or question. Who cared if he smelled like fucking strawberry shortcake all day?

She squirted a dime-sized dollop in the middle of his palm and set the bottle on the table. Before Sandor could rub his hands together, Sansa blindsided him back into the reticent inferno of respiratory distress and feeling like he was about to combust.

He hadn’t moved from the table. Instead, Sansa came to him. In fact, she planted herself right between his open legs. She touched him too, placing her hand in his and rubbing the lotion into his skin.

Her touch was tentative at first, testing the waters and peering up at him for any evidence that he might reject her advance. He had no objections to give. And it wasn’t just a touch. Sansa massaged his fingers and knuckles. She kept his eyes and interlaced her fingers with his but slowly dragged them back and repeated the gesture now with her thumb rubbing the meat of his palm.

People were watching. At least, Sandor assumed they were. The figures fluttering in his periphery slowed or stopped altogether. Sandor didn’t care. Entirely entranced, he studied Sansa’s gorgeous face up close, relished her touch, and battled overwhelming desire to further close the distance. Her hands were small in his, soft and warm against his skin, the contact eliciting a pleasured buzz that worked through him.

“You do this for all your customers?” Sandor rasped.

He hoped not. This was one hell of a sensual lotion sampling and already more intimate than probably half of his encounters with women he’d fucked. Luckily for him, Sansa shook her head.

“Just special ones.”

She smiled prettily at him. Everything she did, she did prettily. Whatever her strange magic was, Sandor was sold and wanted more of it. He also wanted every jackass lurking around to fuck off so he could lean forward and claim Sansa’s pouty and plush lips, lipstick be damned. He didn’t care. She could get it anywhere she wanted as long as it was on him.

“Technically, I haven’t bought anything yet,” Sandor joked. It was true, though. 

Sansa cradled his hand between hers and gave a gentle squeeze. “Maybe I see the potential.”

She left him dumbfounded as she removed herself from between his legs and returned the lotion to the display. He hadn’t even noticed someone wander up to his table, not until they cleared their throat.

Sandor answered their inane question and sent them on their way with a ballpoint pen. Just as he’d turned to Sansa to strike up conversation again, a whole gaggle of women turned up at her table and took their sweet fucking time perusing rocks and talking about their auras. In fact, it seemed the entire town was hell-bent on intruding on his and Sansa’s flirtations, as if they’d waited in the wings to intervene just as conversation got going between them.

They both seized on the small moments of chit-chat where they could. He learned Sansa had other siblings—two teenage brothers, an older brother, and a cousin who was, for all intents and purposes, like a brother to her. She had good taste in music, liked to garden and bake, took yoga classes, wasn’t a fan of modern horror movies, but appreciated some of the classics.

Sandor told her about New York, stories from his time at the 73rd precinct, how he grew up, and the not-so-interesting tale of how he ended up in Stark Fall. In brief moments of reprieve, they patch-worked together knowledge of one another, but the festival only gained foot traffic in that time and, just as they’d gain momentum in conversation, some asshole would wander up and put an abrupt stop to it.

It was painfully obvious they needed alone time for most of the activities Sandor had in mind, not least of which to keep conversation fluid and uninterrupted. And that meant Sandor had to buck up and ask her out. Surely, the crowd would thin eventually. People would find their way back home or maybe the weather wouldn’t hold out and the chill would set in.

After Sandor sent off yet another person inquiring about the rabid raccoon, a blessed moment revealed itself. No one was at Sansa’s table. Sandor glanced over at her and gathered up his gusto. 

“So, I have a question for you,” he began.

A sheen of sweat covered his palms. He crossed his arms over his chest, mostly because his hands faintly trembled and _that_ was surely not a good look.

“And I’m positive I have an answer for you,” Sansa said and stared up at him like she knew what was coming and had been waiting for the moment.

“I was wondering—”

A flurry of bells and wind chimes interrupted. Sansa expelled a frustrated groan and pulled her phone from her back pocket. Though she silenced it, she stared at the screen.

“It’s my mom,” she said, as if debating whether to answer.

“Nah, go on. You should take that.”

Sandor waved her off as if it were no big deal. As she took the call, he organized the dwindling stack of Halloween pamphlets. The town had snatched them up hand over fist, enough that Mildred had been tasked to print off more.

“My mom needs my help for a few minutes,” Sansa told him regretfully when she returned. “Do you mind watching my table while I’m gone? It won’t be long.”

Sandor nodded and put on a stern face. “Not a problem. I’ll make sure no one kidnaps your crystals.”

“Oh, good!” Sansa sighed with exaggerated relief. “We wouldn’t want that to happen again.”

“Again?”

“You must not have heard,” she relayed with feigned somberness. “The Great Crystal Heist of 2007. It even made the newspaper.”

Sandor shook his head. “Wow. Must’ve really gripped the town.” 

Sansa cracked first, a soft little smile, but Sandor’s chuckle sent her into laughter too, such a merry sound.

“Thank you. I’ll be back in a few and then I want to hear what your question is!”

She pointed at him and started for the center of the town square, the heart of the festival.

Sandor enjoyed the view as Sansa walked away—her hips swaying in such a tantalizing way, the shape of her body, the length of her legs—until she disappeared amongst the crowd.

Not long after, some old bag of dust appeared at the table. The scent of mothballs gave her away; that and her hideous purse. Sandor remained rooted behind his table with his arms crossed over his chest. He slipped his aviators back over his eyes as the sun spilled closer to his table.

Any self-aware person would’ve perused and then moved down the line to other businesses—the bakery table on the other side of Sansa’s or perhaps the table of dudes who looked like they were shareholders in REI and sold homemade granola. A self-aware person would’ve thought to themselves, _“I need this hunk of rock to cleanse my dog’s aura, but no one’s here, so I’ll come back, or maybe Fido is a fucking dog and doesn’t need his aura cleansed.”_

Sandor should’ve guessed that mothball lady, who’d already cock-blocked him and Sansa once, wasn’t self-aware. Therefore, it shouldn’t have come as any shock to him when she turned to Sandor, jabbed her finger towards the table, and demanded, “How much for these?”

Sandor didn’t flinch. He remained statuesque and stared straight ahead.

“I don’t know,” he grumbled. “Sansa will be back in a few minutes if you want to hang out or you can come back later.”

He hoped she’d opt for the latter. Truly, she could’ve stuffed her face with cupcakes or spared her ass and moseyed on down to the granola assholes who never stop smiling. They seemed better suited to put up with her bullshit. Did she do that? No, of course not. She also refused to just quietly wait until Sansa returned.

“The sign says four for $10, but I can’t tell if it’s for the small ones or the medium ones.”

She gawked at Sandor as if he should know, as if he weren’t here handing out pamphlets that would probably result in at least a handful of angry phone calls to the police station. Of course not. Clearly, he was Sansa’s booth bitch and responsible for taking up the mystical mantle in her absence.

“I don’t know,” Sandor growled.

There it was—the disgusted sigh; the look of utter appall that he didn’t have an answer for her; and now more demands.

“Well, can’t you see if there’s a price sheet somewhere?” The old bag poked her head behind Sansa’s table.

“Not my table, lady,” Sandor snapped. “And not yours either. If you want tips for safe trick or treating, I can help you out, but that…stuff…” He waved his hand at the table of things he didn’t know the first thing about. “I can’t help.”

A Level Two or Three Karen would’ve given up. They’d complain, no doubt, but they’d recognize the futility and the lost cause of it all and save their epic bitchiness for somewhere with a management hierarchy. This broad displayed signs now of a Level Four Karen—red-faced delusion; hands on her hips; the disgusted sigh now guttural and with some phlegm behind it.

“If she left you to look after her table, then she left you in charge of what she’s selling. Now, can you help me or not?”

Sandor put on a smile and slowly pulled his sunglasses from his face and tucked them into his jacket’s pocket.

“Sure. I’ll help,” he replied and put on a charade of customer service as he assumed the spot behind Sansa’s table. “What are you looking for today, ma’am?”

Level Four Karen couldn’t depart with her bitchiness just yet. That was for those level one and two hacks. Oh no, she had to keep it up just so he knew who was in charge here.

“I’ve been under a lot of stress lately,” she veritably yelled, as if he might not hear her. “Give me something that can help with that.”

The lady forcefully wielded her entitlement like a seasoned expert. He’d expect no less from her. This was a woman who’d chewed up and spit out her fair share of minimum wage workers. In her wake, she left a sea of exhausted and underpaid sales associates all cut down to size.

Sandor swallowed down his vitriol. He couldn’t crack now.

“Alright,” he replied calmly, and his eyes scanned the table. “Let me remember what Sansa said about these.”

He cupped his chin and scratched at the stubble. His eyes landed on a smooth rod-shaped stone about four inches long and deep red. He plucked it from the table and held it up for Her Royal Cuntiness.

If Sandor knew one thing, it was that he could get away with a lot of shit if executed with unwavering confidence and an air of authority. He kept his features flat and his eyes square on the woman.

“This is _fuck-off-onite._ A very obscure mineral. Mined in…uh…Djibouti, I believe.”

“Facoughonite,” she repeated, so satisfyingly unaware of what he’d just said. Hook, line, and sinker, he got her. 

Sandor pointed at her. “Precisely. _Fuck-off-onite_ sticks release pent up tension. An obstruction if you will. It works on the rectal chakra.”

Now he was pushing it. Fuck Biscuit scrunched up her face as if she’d finally gotten a whiff of herself.

“Rectal chakra? That doesn’t sound right.”

Her disbelief surmounted. He had to sell it. Sandor gave a serious nod. She wavered dangerously close to advancing to Level Five Karen, which probably entailed destruction of property (it was her right, of course) or physical violence (he’d have it coming, she’d say).

“That’s what Sansa said,” Sandor affirmed with a shrug. “The rectal chakra is the spiritual waste repository for our past-life vibration rituals and star seed aura journey from ancestral sex magick astral adventures.”

The woman looked utterly baffled. Sandor didn’t blame her. He’d quite literally spewed word vomit of things he’d seen or heard in passing around Sansa’s shop.

“It’s where all the pent up…well, if I can be blunt…shit comes out,” he clarified. “If you can release it, stress and bad energy flushes away.”

The woman seemed to respond positively to that and took the stone from Sandor’s hand.

“What do I do with it?” she asked.

Leaned forward, Sandor pressed both hands to the table and leveled his eyes at the Cock Gobbler. He spoke low and slow, enough that he captured her undivided attention and the full investment of her belief.

“You’re gonna open your rectal chakra,” Sandor instructed. “It works best with direct contact. So, you’re gonna wanna put it up your backside. Wait ten minutes. You’ll feel the _fuck-off_ energy coursing through you. Then you’ll pull the stick out of your ass and your stress will go away. You’ll be ready to fully fuck off.”

There was a brief—very brief—moment of shocked silence before the full nuclear melt down began. Twat Waffle threw the _fuck-off-onite_ to the table. It snapped in half and the force at which it landed sent a crystal ball rolling off its base to the grass.

“You are despicable!” she shrieked. Her howl carried far enough that half the square turned to look and even the granola assholes weren’t smiling anymore. “You can tell Sansa Stark she’s lost my business and I will have a word with her mother about you.”

“Go for it,” Sandor snorted. “She ain’t my mother.”

The woman waddled off and Sandor watched with a smug smile. He probably should’ve guessed the satisfaction would be short-lived.

Sansa broke through the crowd and the look on her face said she’d either already heard what happened or more likely heard the shrill harpy-like sounds coming from the woman who flounced right up to Sansa and apparently gave much more than a piece of her mind.

_Oh fuck._

This wasn’t looking good. The lady’s arm gestured wildly and, although Sandor caught only every third word of what she was saying—or really screaming—none of them were good. Disgrace. Humiliated. Disrespected.

Sansa tried to get a word in but couldn’t. Her brows knit together with sympathy and Sandor didn’t quite understand why until he saw that the woman’s rage had turned into hysterical sobbing now.

In fact, it’d transformed into such an epic tantrum that others ran over to console the woman as she pointed at Sandor. A small crowd gathered around her, produced tissues, and gave soft rubs to the woman’s back as she blubbered.

They all glowered at him—the outsider who’d stood down their Karen. She was a bitch, but she was _their_ bitch. It was as if this town was rejecting him like a splinter—identified as a foreign object and gradually pushed out.

Sansa abandoned the woman who now had sufficient emotional support, it seemed, and marched up to Sandor’s table. She did not look happy; not in the slightest. She gaped at him in disbelief; not just that, but _disappointed_ disbelief, which was far worse in his book.

“Ah shit,” Sandor grumbled to himself and drew a deep breath.

Yet again, his fucking mouth had a way of getting him in trouble sometimes. It mostly served him well, and he’d hoped for it to serve Sansa well too, but that prospect was all but sidelined now.

“What did you say to her?” Sansa demanded. “You told her to fuck off?”

“No, not…” Sandor tried to explain. It wasn’t even a long story to tell so he could have, but he hated excuses and, even more, he hated liars. “Well, in a roundabout way…okay, maybe. Yes.”

The truth didn’t help. Sansa shook her head at him; a slow shake, the kind that usually precedes an “unbelievable” or some other single-word admonition.

“She’s a customer,” Sansa scolded. Her voice shook. “I know she’s difficult, but you had no right to do that or to speak to her that way.”

A crack in the contrition, Sandor flung one arm toward the hag now graciously accepting cupcakes like an infant having a pacifier shoved in its mouth.

It wasn’t often Sandor asked people to cut him some slack and he wouldn’t now, but Jesus fucking Christ, he’d hoped Sansa would be more reasonable than this.

“You really give a shit what that lady thinks? She’s a terror. The whole town is your customer. You don’t need her.”

Sansa swooped down and snatched up the fallen crystal ball and discovered now the broken stick of _fuck-off-onite_.

“That’s not the point,” she insisted. “Did you tell her something about a rectal chakra?”

Sansa held up the broken halves of the stone.

“Alright, yes,” Sandor conceded again and couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped him.

Maybe Sansa needed her rectal chakra opened too. She didn’t laugh. She didn’t even break a suggestion of a smile. She stared at him as if “humorous” was the last attribute she’d pin to this situation.

“Oh c’mon! It was funny,” Sandor cajoled and searched her eyes for the moment she might relent. She didn’t.

“It’s not funny.” Sansa tossed the broken stone in the trash. “She’s filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.” 

“I know that part’s not funny, but, I mean, chakras? Really?” Sandor pressed with his own disbelief. “You really believe in all this hocus pocus? That carrying rocks around will help people? That someone can fix their problems by burning a few candles and saying a couple of words?”

Sansa turned to him and it wasn’t anger coming through now. It was hurt. Her eyes were too expressive to hide it for any length of time.

_Goddamnit._ His fucking mouth again. At this point, he might as well just permanently insert his size fifteen into it.

“Yes, really,” she whispered and stared at her hands folded together for a moment before glancing at her table, the symbol of so much she stood for and who she was. “Look, it’s clear now you think this is all bullshit and a waste of time and just…I don’t know…pretend or for crazy people. I know you don’t believe in it and you don’t have to, but this is my business and my livelihood. And I had hoped…”

She paused and stared up at him. Her bottom lip pouted slightly. She looked sad; so very sad.

“I don’t know what I hoped for and I don’t know what else to say.”

With that, Sansa abandoned the table and headed for the square. The muffin man at the bakery table shook his head at Sandor. That’s how he knew he _really_ screwed up; when even the fucking muffin man got it.

“Sansa, please. I’m sorry!” Sandor called after her.

She didn’t turn around.

Of course, this wasn’t about losing a customer or pissing off some old dusty broad who probably annoyed the shit out of Sansa on the regular.

In rejecting the stones and chakras, candles and charms, he might as well have been rejecting her. Even a stupendous dumb ass like him could recognize that now. He’d feel no different if some chick bagged on his line of work. But then, it wasn’t just that. This wasn’t just a job or a career for her; a simple 9-to-5 that paid the bills. This was her life, her identity, so much of what she was about, and he’d just shit all over it.

_Fuck._

He would’ve run after her, made it right, and apologized, but Sansa’s mother and sister found her in the crowd. She explained it to them, apparently. All three turned to him. Sansa still looked on the verge of tears, Arya looked pissed, and Catelyn appeared mildly amused at the chakra story, but obviously concerned for her daughter.

Bless her little old soul, Mildred ambled up behind the table. She’d come to relieve Sandor of his duties and now offered him the possibility to tuck tail and avoid digging himself into a deeper hole.

She shuffled up to Sandor’s side with the scarf she’d been working on and held it up to him. Still too short. She’d been complaining about how tall he was for days now. Just when she thought she’d knit the thing long enough, it’d still look comically short.

“Well, what did you do now, Casanova?” Mildred needled and glanced at the Stark women still convening, but thankfully not all staring him down anymore.

“I pissed off one of Sansa’s customers.”

That was the simple answer, but not necessarily the truth. In reality, he’d probably blown his chances with the girl, completely and irrevocably. That part stung, though he only had himself to blame.

“Looks like you pissed off more than just a customer,” Mildred pointed out and tucked her knitting into her bag.

Sandor crossed his arms tightly over his chest. “Mildred, now’s not the time for your sass.” 

“Worry about your own sass, fella. It seems to get you into trouble,” she retorted. “I’d watch your back if I were you.”

Sandor guffawed at such an ominous warning issuing from a little old lady. If he knew one thing, though, Mildred was not to be trifled with. He cut her an amused glance and dubiously lifted a brow.

“What? You think they’re gonna jump me or something?”

“They don’t need to. They’re witches,” Mildred informed plainly, as if she’d just told him the sky was blue and any idiot could see, except, of course, the idiots with their eyes still closed. “Powerful ones, too. You’d do well to start believing in that. You haven’t heard about Sansa’s ex-lover, I take it.”

Sandor uncrossed his arms and turned to Mildred. No, he most certainly had not heard that part. She had his attention, though, because a portentous shadow seemed to have fallen over her, darkening her with dread and dampening her firecracker spirit.

“He disappeared,” she whispered as if it were the town’s dirty secret. Rightfully so. This was more than a little troubling. 

“They shwacked him?”

Mildred rolled her eyes with a deep sigh and continued less eerily now.

“No, not everything is like a mob movie. He wronged Sansa in a very terrible way. He too didn’t believe in magic or mysticism. He scoffed at her ways and rejected her birthright. She cast a spell. I don’t know what, but it backfired and her relationship with this man turned dark rather quickly.

“He ultimately sought to separate her from her family; to take her away and have her denounce her own abilities and sacred lineage. The Starks called a meeting of their familial coven—witches whose bloodlines intersect with the Stark family tree; offshoots that branched off hundreds of years ago but retain the same magical root.”

Sandor was a skeptic, through and through. He believed in the empirical world; that senses and science prevailed; that, for something to exist, it had to be observable. Even he had to admit, though, that this town had a vibe to it, an undercurrent of something he couldn’t put his finger on but could feel the pulse of anyhow.

In Stark Fall, the otherworldly pervaded the mundane and existed in parallel. Every single person here—without exception—accepted that reality as easily as they accepted that both the sun and the moon could exist together, each ruling over its dominion of day and night. The ordinary boasted an aura of the surreal, and nothing was ever what it seemed.

Even for Sandor, strange coincidences cropped up with increasing regularity—songs he hadn’t thought of in years suddenly pervading the radio airwaves; objects he swore he left at home ending up on his desk at work; he’d think of someone momentarily, only to see their name pop up on his caller ID.

It was as if an odd enchantment blanketed this town, a sleepy haze of the mystical where time moved differently, and the outside world was distant. And all of it centered on one family.

“What did they do?” Sandor asked because he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t increasingly intrigued with the Starks.

Every layer of their history that’d been revealed to him left him with questions and an appetite for more. No wonder he voraciously consumed the book sitting on his nightstand. The more he learned, the more he wanted to know.

A rare smile crept across Mildred's lips, and she seemed to study Sandor. She looked at him as if he were finally getting it; the outsider falling in line and letting the fantastical current of this place sweep him away rather than clinging to the shore of his outdated beliefs.

“They sent him away. A banishment spell, from what I understand. He vanished. Poof! Just like that. Gone. His family left town and eventually found him. He wasn’t the same, though, or so it’s told; hardly the man he once was.

“The Starks don’t practice black magic. But whatever they did, they ensured he paid a heavy price for trying to turn Sansa against her own family. The justice was deserved and delivered fairly—Ned Stark wouldn’t have had it any other way—but this town hasn’t forgotten what happens when you cross them. Then again, a tough guy like you doesn’t believe in that sort of thing, right?”

Sandor swallowed hard. He didn’t mean to. “Alright. I get it,” he quietly relented.

He wasn’t stupid. Even in Brooklyn, every neighborhood had “that family” no one ever messed with because their uncle or granddad had ties to the mob, or the brothers had a penchant for delivering vigilante justice to anyone who fucked with their blood. Same difference, except here it was one family and the three women, in particular.

“What do I do now?” Sandor asked Mildred, his lifeline since she seemed to know a fair bit about the family.

“You can start with an apology,” Mildred replied. “And then learn how to appreciate Sansa—not just her face or her backside, which I’ve noticed you seem fond of—but the rest of her. She is a witch and always will be. You will never change that, and you shouldn’t want to.”

Sandor nodded. It was sound advice, probably the same thing his sister, Mirabelle, would tell him. She was always full of good advice too; advice she’d mouth off whether he asked for it or not. He wondered what she’d say now.

Sandor felt the familiar weight of being watched. He lifted his eyes to the square where the crowd had thinned. The Stark women stared at him. Catelyn stood between her daughters. The breeze whipped at the skirt of her chiffon dress and the black shawl draped around her shoulders. Arya glared with an icy gaze that could cut steel. With her face impassible, Sansa stared, but then lifted her eyes to the old oak that loomed above Sandor.

A powerful gust of wind ripped through the canopy but left the other trees untouched. Leaves rained down from above, scattering amongst him and blanketing the table. They stuck in his hair and whirled about him. Just him. Just his table.

The squall ended as quickly as it had begun. Sandor stilled. Sansa matched his eyes. The Stark women cast one last look at him before turning around and marching off through the crowd.

“She’s gonna make a believer out of you,” Mildred observed with a laugh and just as Sandor’s phone buzzed in his back pocket with an incoming call.

“She already has,” he muttered and pulled out his phone.

Sandor stared at the screen. A chill worked through him. Another “coincidence.” Not a coincidence at all…

Mirabelle’s name flashed across the screen. He’d have to call her back. Right now, he’d needed to watch his back in case the witches reappeared to drop a tree branch on him or banish him from their town because, make no mistake, this was their town.

He tucked the phone back into his pocket and shook out his hair to dislodge the leaves. A few were in deep and crumbled when he tried to pluck them free.

Mildred eyed him with obvious pity, or at least something that looked close to it because his misfortune was really of his own making.

“Go home. You’ve been here all day,” she said and shooed him away to the edge of the table.

“Yeah? How do you know that?”

She gave him a pointed look over the gold frame of her glasses. “Because I saw you fondling Cornelius’s markings in the tree this morning.”

Shit. He didn’t think anyone had seen that.

“Ah, you saw,” Sandor chuckled.

Mildred pulled a fresh stack of pamphlets from her bag and dropped them to the leaf-covered table. 

“Yes, I saw.” She turned to Sandor now and peered up at him, but for a moment didn’t speak. She seemed to be internally debating something. “I’ll do you a favor because you’re a pain in my ass, but I still consider you a friend. If I see you here at dusk sitting on that bench right over there, watching the candlelit walk to the cemetery, I won’t tell anyone.”

Sandor followed Mildred’s crooked finger that pointed to a bench on the edge of the square. It seemed like an innocuous place. The square boasted plenty of benches.

“What happens if I do that?” Sandor asked.

Mildred withdrew her finger and lowered her voice to a hush.

“If you sit there long enough and quiet enough, eventually a few flickering flames will appear, carried by unseen hands, and they’ll head towards the cemetery, trailing after the procession. Not everyone sees them. You will.”

The casual certainty of the last bit got Sandor’s attention. Mildred acted as if it were a foregone conclusion and a known quantity. Sandor had never experienced anything supernatural or spooky in his life, and clearly, he wasn’t primed to believe in it.

Sandor crossed his arms over his chest. “Why are you so sure about that?”

“You didn’t end up in this town by accident, Detective Clegane. It chose you.”

It should’ve been an ominous statement, and it beckoned goosebumps as if it were. Yet, Mildred said it so sincerely, almost sweetly, and with that knowing look again; the one that said the answers were right in front of him. All he had to do was open his eyes and, more importantly, believe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, the plot certainly thickens! There’s much more going on here than what meets the eye, which was one of the many reasons I was so looking forward to reaching this chapter! It really kicks off the rest of this fic. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed pulling it together. 
> 
> While not every chapter will have an excerpt from Ned’s book, there will be more of them! And though Ned is not alive in this fic, I like to think his presence and character are represented through the excerpts we’ll see.
> 
> If you’ve read “Gods and Monsters,” Sandor’s sister Mirabelle will be a familiar to you. I knew I wanted Sandor’s sister to be a part of this fic and I couldn’t imagine anyone other than Mirabelle filling that role. I’m so happy to include her in this story and we’ll be seeing more of her! 
> 
> The next two chapters are Sansa chapters so we’ll see how she handles the fall out of this foible! 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and for all the love and support you’ve shown this fic! I can’t wait to share the rest of it with you!


	5. Sisters of the Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a long one, but it's split up into three sections, so hopefully that helps the reading experience. Enjoy!

On a rainy Tuesday, the cobblestone sidewalk outside of the library might as well have been a slip n’ slide. Slip and slide, she did. Almost. Autumn leaves stuck to the lopsided bricks, and puddles welled in uneven divots.

It was hell in heels, but Sansa negotiated it carefully; so carefully, in fact, she almost didn’t notice a certain black car parked along the street. Only one person in town drove a car like this—a Mustang with New York plates.

The sight of it sent Sansa so viscerally on edge she stopped mid-stride and stood in a puddle, entirely unaware her suede boots sopped up the rain until the damp reached her socks.

He’d called. He’d texted. He’d stopped by the shop.

The infuriating thing—Sandor’s attempts at contact existed in the sweet spot between desperate haranguing and staid aloofness that would’ve rendered his apologies a box checking exercise.

No, this man espoused tactical contrition. He crafted pointed and sincere text messages and left self-assured voicemails that came down to two things—first, he was sorry ( _very_ sorry) and second, he wanted to meet.

_“Please, Sansa. I just want to see you so we can talk, and I can make this right.”_

That had been a standout line in one of his voicemails, and not just because of what he said. His gravelly voice had sounded steeped in fatigue and the phone only deepened its register. Those words had been saturated with sorrowful regret that bled through the line.

Sansa saved the voicemail and, each night since, listened to it before she fell asleep. Hearkening back to her teenage years where romance was always wistful and sweet, she’d even close her eyes and pretended Sandor was there with her and his voicemail was pillow talk. 

And _that_ was why she had to screen his calls, leave his texts on read, and, under no circumstances, could she see him face-to-face. Her silly little heart would lose resolve.

Sansa glanced at the library with a knot in her stomach. She didn’t need to check out that book anyhow. Sandor Clegane was out-and-about and, for some reason, when she was around him, all common sense went right out the window. With that in mind, she hurried down the sidewalk as fast as the slippery cobblestones would allow.

Sansa pulled up the hood of her black raincoat and hurried along, but an unmistakable silhouette emerged from the library’s elaborate entrance, all brass and glass and hand-crafted masonry. Thick tangles of ivy crept up the old stones in dire need of tuck pointing, but that was half the charm. The other half was old tomes with dusty pages on mahogany shelves and the soft, amber-lit haze that suffused the quiet space.

It wasn’t just Sandor’s height or massive build that gave him away, but how he moved in such casual yet confident strides with purpose packed into his pounding gait. He hurried down the stone steps with no apparent concern for the hazard of falling. Of course, he did. What a show-off!

As if the leaves and rain weren’t enough, Sansa’s knees suddenly went molten, refused to budge, and she was now on a collision course with Detective Sandor Clegane who apparently didn’t mind the rain or cold with his leather jacket left open and a file folder in his hand.

If she moved along quick enough, he wouldn’t see. Sansa quieted her steps and sunk further into the hood of her coat, but the ends of her hair spilled out and it wasn’t as if this town was crawling with redheads.

She moved as stealthily as she could towards the weeping willow at the end of the block, but Sandor’s pace quickened behind her, no longer casual.

“Sansa!”

_Shit._

His booming voice echoed in the mostly empty street. With no other living souls about, only the tall trees stood witness; that and the old haunt that hung around the willow. Sometimes it perched on the branches, and other times it ducked between the draping leaves. An ancient spirit, it took vague form, vaporous except two orbs for eyes, and, though it was harmless, Sansa doubted it’d ever been human.

For now, it was just her and Sandor Clegane and the cold November rain that pattered the surrounding puddles. Sansa was well and truly trapped. She slowly turned around as Sandor approached more tentatively, as if fully aware Sansa planned to barrel right past him and keep going.

She crossed her arms over her chest and mumbled a petulant, “Hi.”

The greeting came somber and hollow, a world away from the gleeful exuberance she normally paid him. Sandor noticed the difference. His face contorted with a frown and his brows knit together.

Their blowout should’ve diminished his attractiveness. It should’ve made his towering height comical, his muscular build obnoxious, his scars unfortunate, his piercing gray eyes cruel, his mouth no longer irresistibly kissable, and his hair no longer lush and wonderfully suited to him. Why the hell did he _still_ look good with his hopeful little smirk and the rain dampening the loose tendrils of his hair?

It wasn’t fair, and there was only one thing to do about it—pout.

Sansa fixed her eyes to the grassy knoll outside the library with its lover’s bench; some S-shaped attempt at a tête-à-tête seat meant for canoodling and whispered words of affection. There would be none of that now.

“Hey,” Sandor sighed with palpable relief. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you. Calls, texts, I even swung by your shop yesterday, but you weren’t there.”

She had indeed been there, but Jeyne sounded the alarm when she spotted Sandor crossing the street with a handwritten letter and a flower arrangement in a white pumpkin. Sansa had ducked into the stockroom and listened to the wind abruptly leave Sandor’s sails as Jeyne bumbled her way through a lie. He left the arrangement and the letter and asked Jeyne to let her know he’d stopped by.

The note was simple; no gimmicky schticks and he didn’t pull any punches—he never meant to hurt her, he was sorry that he did, he appreciated her for who she was, and he wanted to fix it. Did he, though? He could say it all he wanted in a letter, but this embodied that saying—don’t talk about it, be about it.

“Oh,” Sansa replied tepidly, still austere and gazing anywhere other than Sandor standing right in front of her. “Yeah. I’ve just been busy.”

Another statement bloated with mistruth, Sandor huffed at that. His exhale crystallized on a white puff from his nicely shaped lips that were a deeper pink from the cold. Sansa wanted to kiss them. How very dare he still look this good!

“I would’ve settled for a text. A sign of life. Anything.”

The softness of his voice drew her eyes. Sandor stared at her imploringly, tender almost. Sansa’s resolve would collapse under the pressure of this gentle affection. She fixed her gaze to the library as warmth gathered in her belly.

“Why are you here?” she asked, but it wasn’t as if she cared.

Sandor lifted the manila folder in his hand. Raindrops stained the cover and papers poked out the back end.

“Just researching for a cold case,” he told her with abbreviated revelation. He didn’t want to talk about work. He wanted to talk about her, him, _them._

Sansa would’ve gladly ended this rendezvous at an impasse, but a forgotten detail catapulted to the forefront of her mind. Her second run-in with Sandor happened on the day she met with Chief Manderly about assisting on a cold case. She had agreed to help and assumed he’d reach out when the time came. Apparently, the time came…and went.

Sandor ignored his folder and how the rain pattered it with a punishing persistence that meant it’d dry all wrinkled and water stained. His head tilted softly askew, and he gathered up all his words that Sansa had refused to be an audience for.

“Look, I really want some time to talk to you and apologize,” he insisted. His free hand gestured and appeared poised to touch her but stopped short. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Which cold case?” Sansa intervened because her heart was a mess; one big sloppy mess that wanted to touch him too but was still reeling from the wound he’d inflicted. “The one with the missing hiker?”

Sandor handled the interruption graciously enough and bit his tongue that probably wanted to do its part in making up—licks along her lips and trailing down her body to between her thighs. The intrusive thought came with near-palpable imagery, vivid enough that it left Sansa both confused and aroused. The heat spread from her belly to between her legs. _Of all times…_

Sandor swallowed hard and nodded. The intrigue surmounted in him too. “Yeah. That’s the one. You know it?”

“I’m supposed to be assisting on it.”

Awkward silence blanketed the space between them. When she matched Sandor’s eyes, a vision came into sharp focus, detailed in ways that left Sansa addled now. The heat tingled in a familiar way that preceded psychic insights. A scene appeared—Sandor seated on the other side of Chief Manderly’s desk and stubbornly refusing something. Sansa’s name was spoken with both reverence and skepticism, and the divide was clear.

“You talked to Chief Manderly about me working on it, didn’t you?”

Her question came accusatory. Sandor must’ve known. He drew a measured breath that straightened his back and lifted his chin.

“I did. He mentioned that sometimes he brings you on for cases.”

While Sandor held back, Sansa needed something to hold on to. She envisioned her feet growing roots that kept her upright, but another vision came, more technicolor and blinding than the last. Sandor’s voice rumbled around her, but the man didn’t speak now, only stared at her with obvious concern. His past words collided into her—biting disbelief overlaid with his swaggering sarcasm. Yet again, it stung.

“You refused,” Sansa managed on what would’ve been a gasp for the burning little ball of fire at her mind’s eye now.

She held it together. For a man who didn’t believe, she couldn’t imagine Sandor would ever understand what it felt like to live with this “gift.” Though he couldn’t understand and apparently didn’t want to try, that didn’t stop him from regarding Sansa with worry that gathered like a storm in his eyes. His mouth twitched and fingers fumbled with the sleeve of his jacket.

“I mean, I didn’t _refuse_ refuse,” he explained. “I just work better alone. I always have. It’s nothing personal, I promise.”

More damning information surfaced, rising from the depths, and bobbing like a buoy on troubled seas. The words embedded in Sansa’s skin with searing pain.

“You said psychics are looking for clout,” Sansa relayed. Her limbs ached and stomach roiled. “Something about Miss Cleo; that psychics defraud innocent people.”

She wanted to lie down. The grassy knoll didn’t look so bad, sodden with puddles though it was. If her visions normally appeared like quiet suggestions that merely tapped her on the shoulder, this one barreled into her with the force of a freight train and clobbered her with its message.

Sandor eyed her warily. “Did Manderly tell you that?”

Sansa had an answer to give but withheld. The vision lifted like a fog dispersing and left her in real time with Sandor peering at her from beneath a folded brow. The intervening silence told him all he needed to know. He settled back on his heels and slowly shook his head.

“He didn’t have to, did he?”

Yet again, Sansa’s reticence gave her away.

“Of course,” Sandor snorted. “I see how it is. You can get inside my head, but you don’t bother to return my calls or texts to hear it straight from me or to give me the chance to explain. I never said those things about you specifically, Sansa.”

His shoulders stiffened and jaw clenched with haughty defiance, as if he weren’t the one slinging insults.

“But you did refuse to work with me.”

Sansa’s arms tightened around her chest as a frigid breeze picked up around them. Sandor settled one hand on his hip and released a sigh as he dropped his head. Cornered and caught, he had nowhere to go, and truth was the price for freedom.

“I declined to work with you, yes,” he admitted with some remorse, but the penitence was short-lived. “However, your visions conveniently leave out the reasons why, the part about how sorry I am, and that I know I fucked up and I just want a shot at making it right.”

“That’s not how it works!” Sansa protested and quickly rediscovered what this was all about in the first place. Wounds reopened, she stood her ground, slippery though it was. “It’s not like I can help it. I can’t choose the things I see, but you wouldn’t know that, would you? You don’t believe, anyway. You’ve already said you’re sorry. You don’t need to keep calling and texting. There’s nothing to talk about.”

The heat between them returned. Sandor’s chest heaved, but his eyes roamed her body and he looked at odds with himself.

“Okay, so I guess I’ll just be an open book for you then, but I’ll have to settle for the cold shoulder and no chance to set things straight. Is that it?”

His cheeks flushed red, if not for agitation then the cold seeping in. It didn’t turn down the temperature between them, though. Sansa shared in that fire. Her fingers curled to her palms and her breaths passed in hot spurts from her lips.

“I don’t owe you anything, and maybe I didn’t want to work with you either. Did you ever consider that?”

Sandor scoffed, half a guffaw and half a bitter exhale, and shook his head. “So, this is how it’s gonna be between us?”

The rain came down in sheets now. Sansa shivered against it. It soaked through Sandor’s white shirt that clung to his skin and afforded a peek at just how contoured his chest was and the perfect amount of chest hair that covered it.

For a moment, they remained locked at the eyes and battling the same odd instinct that would have them careening into one another with sheer magnetic force. Locked at the lips, hands roaming, hearts beating—she wanted him, and he wanted her and maybe they could call off the cavalry in this war neither really wanted to wage. Maybe they could work it out without words, but with bodies melded together, out of the chilly rain and into a warm bed.

It was Sansa’s move, though. Sandor would accept a carnal solution and something gentled in him that said he’d stand down if Sansa wanted and if she forgave him.

Sansa played her move with a flippant shrug to hide how much she cared and just how hurt she’d been.

Sandor crossed his arms, the folder now tucked against his side. He stared off towards the stretch of empty street behind her. For a moment, he eyed the willow as if he glimpsed the tree spirit there.

“Alright, if that’s what you want.” 

Sansa nodded. “It is.”

It wasn’t. Not at all. Then again, she didn’t choose for it to be this way.

For a few quiet beats, neither made a move, as if waiting for any last alibis or for the other to steer the course away from the hell-scape of silent treatment they were heading. Nothing else came, so Sandor cleared his throat and lifted his chin as if hoisting up a bruised ego.

“Carry on then but stay outta my head.” 

Sansa expelled a derisive laugh at his grumbled warning and countered with, “I’ll stay out of your head if you stay out of my way.”

It would’ve been perfect. She would’ve shouldered past him and sauntered back down the sidewalk with her head held high and dignity firmly intact. It would’ve been, except just as Sansa stepped past Sandor, the heel of her boot lodged in a perfectly sized divot in the cobblestone. It was enough to knock her off balance, and her other foot landed on a rain-soaked leaf that offered no traction.

She would’ve surely eaten it—ass in a puddle; legs in the air; pride in the toilet. Strong arms steadied her, though, and it happened so fast, but Sansa ended up against Sandor’s chest and in the cage of his arms. She gripped his biceps and didn’t bother to let go. Neither did he.

“And what if I don’t?” Sandor rasped in that same sultry tone as his voicemail. It only further rendered Sansa’s legs gelatinous, especially with how his eyes had gone heavy-lidded and landed on her mouth. He most certainly preferred a carnal solution; for them to literally bang out their differences.

“It’s a small town. You gonna turn me into a frog, princess?”

Sansa pulled away and fired back, “A clown would be more fitting.” 

She didn’t know why she said it. She regretted it immediately. It was a low blow and uncalled for. Maybe it was her damaged pride. Maybe it was the infuriating desire to be in his arms again, but under different circumstances.

Sandor ran his hand through his hair now thoroughly wet and shook his head with a huff.

“On that note, I got shit to do,” he mumbled with stoic resolve and waggled the folder. “The sooner I can finish this, the sooner I can get the fuck out of this place and back where I belong. Then you won’t have to worry about me being in your way. Or maybe you can work one of those banishment spells you’re fond of.”

He narrowed his eyes at her and darted towards the curb and his car parked next to them.

“Maybe I will,” Sansa replied, though she felt no better for any of this. She wouldn’t walk away with the righteous sense that she’d won the upper hand. Neither would he. 

“Please do.” Sandor yanked open his car door and shot her one last look before climbing in.

* * *

“I despise him!” Sansa declared later that night as pounding rain battered the stained-glass windows of her mother’s kitchen.

Rattled by her run in with Sandor, Sansa did the sensible thing—swung by her mom’s for dinner and apparently a bit too much wine.

October, the family cat, sat in her lap and batted at the ends of her hair. A scrappy little thing and not quite out of kitten-hood, he was all legs and tail and chaotic energy, a black mass of claws and fur perpetually underfoot, jumping out from around corners, and hauling ass up and down hallways at night.

Sansa’s outburst sent October jumping from her lap. It also sent her stool wobbling at the large kitchen island that was really just a tall, dark wood table that’d been here as long as she could remember. It bore the knicks and scratches to prove it. So too did the floors—wide planks of old wood that stood witness to time and generations of the Stark bloodline.

Her mother eyed her with a little smirk that said Sansa had been caught in a lie. Either that or she’d slurred her words. The wine had stained Sansa’s lips dark red, and this was a subtle look of “momma shaming” that meant she needed to lie off the Bordeaux lest she turn into her alter ego—Sloshy Sansa. Her mother didn’t call her on the lie or the tipsiness. Instead, she stirred the pot of stew and focused her intention.

Sansa didn’t despise Sandor, but the wine that warmed her cheeks had also loosened her lips with hyperbolic sentiment. Despise was too harsh. What was below despise? Disappointment? _I’m disappointed in him._

That was too familiar. She barely knew the man. She hadn’t given him enough ground to disappoint her. And yet, here she was—mildly tipsy and wildly disappointed on a Tuesday night.

Tuesday nights were for kitchen witchery—hearty stews made with health and healing in mind and packaged up for the nursing home; harvest casseroles with garden vegetables sent off to the fire station with protection spells folded in; apple tarts and berry cobblers whipped up with loving intent and handed out to schoolteachers.

The Starks always gave back to the community that had given them so much. It started in times of yore when witchcraft was perilous business. The town folk back then—whose descendants very much still lived in Stark Fall—could’ve handed Sansa’s ancestors over to the Church and purged magick from the village.

They hadn’t.

Instead, they ran interference when Puritans looked to trade with Stark Fall settlers. They did what any self-respecting Pagan sympathizer did back then—hid their witches and warlocks and played up the country bumpkin act until the outsiders moved on. It had worked for a while, at least. The tradition of copious gratitude began then. Nothing said “ _Thanks for not burning me at the stake”_ like a fruit cobbler. It seemed a small price to pay.

“Yeah, well, I _hate_ him,” Arya hissed on the stool next to Sansa.

With a mouthful of leftover bread, she sent a spray of crumbs with her vitriol. Hate was extreme and far too harsh. Sandor had done nothing worthy of hatred.

Their mother’s stirring abruptly stopped. The ladle hung on the edge of the stewpot. She clapped three times toward Arya’s spoken words (and spew of breadcrumbs), a superstitious way to dispel words of negativity and counteract their malicious vibrations before the intention could travel far.

“Be nice,” their mother warned with a pointed look and an equally pointed finger at Arya. “Go wash your hands.”

Water was as important for magickal hygiene as it was for the physical. It washed away stagnant, spiteful, or otherwise harmful energies. Sansa never understood people who could just crawl into bed at night without a shower first. Jeyne did that. She’d work in the shop all day collecting the energies of those coming and going, but merely washed her face and brushed her teeth at night. It was the magickal equivalent of not washing your hands after using the bathroom. The girl didn’t understand why it grossed Sansa and Arya out.

Arya hopped from the stool and dashed to the porcelain farmers sink on the other side of the kitchen. The space was warm with the crackling embers of a dying fire in the hearth. Long before modern stoves and ovens were a thing, the Starks used it for cooking. Now, it just functioned as aesthetic, adding to the myriad of ways this house leaned into its witchy roots and magickal past. Candlelight flickered on the island and at the center of the kitchen table.

“He made fun of our crystals,” Arya groused and soaped up her hands. She cast a pleading look over her shoulder.

“He probably doesn’t know any better,” their mom countered and divided up the stew into containers lined up on the island. Sansa did her part—a pinch each of coriander for healing and garlic salt for protection.

Her mother knew the choreography of kitchen magick. She could probably do it in her sleep. She never missed a beat—stirring deosil, or clockwise, to manifest prosperity and then stirring widdershins, or counterclockwise, to guard against illness. On it went, back and forth. Sansa added herbs that’d been plucked from the garden and strung up and dried in the greenhouse’s sun-soaked windows. 

Arya snatched up a towel and dried her hands on the way back to her stool.

“He told Mothball Molly to buy a crystal for her ass chakra, mom. An ass chakra!”

Mothball Molly was admittedly a demanding pain in the ass who waddled in at least once a week wielding magickal “knowledge” she’d gained through suspect means. Sometimes it was Pinterest. Other times it was a Harry Potter discussion board. All times it was wrong or entirely made up and yet the woman mansplained like the best of them.

Rickon’s laughter rang amongst the wood beams of the kitchen’s high ceiling. The green thumb of the family, he wandered in from the greenhouse off the kitchen with a basket of herbs and a ball of twine.

“That new guy in town is a legend at our school!” He tossed the basket to the kitchen table. “Dude arrested the Reynolds douches. That’s a win in my book.”

Sansa swiveled in her stool towards her little brother, not so little anymore as he towered over their mother and Sansa alike, all lanky limbs and a voice that cracked here and there. Only in his first year of high school, he was bound to fill out, eventually. The life of the party, the perpetual class clown—everyone adored Rickon.

“He didn’t arrest them,” Sansa corrected and swirled her glass of wine as if she was intent to savor it now that she’d guzzled down a couple of glasses. “He brought them to the shop to clean up.”

And to give her flowers. And to flirt. She’d even got the impression he had something to ask her. Their interaction had ended with the distinct feel of “to be continued…” permeating the air and settling to a heaviness that she could—and did—cut with a selenite stick to ease the tension. Good tension, though it was, it was still cumbersome. Even Arya commented about the energetic wake that Sansa and Sandor created. Nice for them. They could bask in it, but it disrupted those in the vicinity.

Sansa’s defense of Sandor earned her a sideways glance from Arya and another quiet smile from her mother. Those motherly smiles were piling up—smiles when a bouquet of peonies left Sansa a giggling hot mess; smiles when she excitedly relayed Sandor’s gallant gesture; smiles when Sansa turned up at the Founders Festival looking like she was fresh off a photoshoot with flawless makeup, hair a bit too perfect, and bubbly effervescence that probably annoyed the ever-loving hell out of her sister. It hadn’t annoyed him, though. She hadn’t forgotten his face when he saw her.

“It was pretty funny,” Bran agreed and swept into the kitchen with his nose stuffed in an old book from their family library, the Stark heritage tucked away in dusty pages ravaged by time and bookworms that chomped at the bindings. 

Sansa disagreed with a nod. “It wasn’t funny.”

Her mom caught that too—the disconnect between the words coming out of Sansa’s mouth and her body that refused to comply with self-delusion—and lifted a brow at her as she snapped the lids on the plastic containers.

It was kind of funny. Rectal chakra wasn’t too far off either. The root chakra sat at the base of the tailbone. He’d even selected an appropriate stone for the chakra, too. His name for it…yes, that was funny. His humor was dry, unabashed, and unapologetic and, when wielded in the right direction, Sansa understood the appeal. It was the bit that came after that was unforgivable.

Her mother halted packaging up the meals and placing them into canvas totes. She eyed each of them—Sansa and Arya on the stools, Bran perched near the apothecary cabinet where the dim light of the old chandelier didn’t quite reach, and Rickon bundling up herbs with twine.

“You, my darling children, have lived in this town your entire life. Things are different where he’s from. Most people aren’t raised to believe in the things we do. I expect you to be kind to him and offer some understanding and compassion, even when he has missteps.”

“What? I like the guy,” Rickon protested and wrapped up a bundle of comfrey that would eventually make its way into a salve.

Rickon was maturing into a charismatic young man, all smiles and humor and a way of capturing a room’s attention with warmth and wit. Like Robb, his inherited abilities weren’t mystical, but practical. The Starks called them Sentries—family members who didn’t inherit magickal abilities but served an equally important role of liaising with the public and protecting the magickal members of the family.

They were interlocutors—approachable and “normal” enough that townsfolk felt at ease around them, but they’d been raised in the ways of magick and loyal to the cause of guarding the family against public misconceptions about witchcraft. They stood sentry, so to speak, as the barrier between the public that could turn on the family and the Stark magickal cadre that was mostly composed of women. If history taught anything, it was that the past hadn’t been kind to women and certainly not to witches.

There were exceptions, though. Bran was a sterling example of a male Stark with extraordinary abilities. Like Sansa, he had the gift of sight, but whereas her visions were within a short timeframe, Bran’s extended well into the past, centuries’ worth of images that he channeled and put to creative use.

He was the caretaker of the family library and compiled the family history. Aided by his visions, Bran pieced together Stark history that he documented with meticulous detail and dedication to historical accuracy. A senior in high school, when he wasn’t busy with schoolwork, Bran spent his time in the library cataloguing the hundreds of books the family had inherited and restored those in dire need.

“You haven’t met him!” Arya reminded Rickon, but he shrugged with a bright smile. Rickon liked everyone. Besides their mother, he was the easiest sell of the family.

Arya was the one not to be trifled with and certainly no one to run afoul of. “He’s going to ruin our business!” she protested.

“I’d like to see anyone try,” their mom responded and heaved the canvas totes off the island. Ever a momma’s boy, Rickon hurried over and took them from her.

Arya lifted her wineglass and veritably howled at the ceiling. “He’s the worst!”

“The worst,” Sansa grumbled and crossed her arms over her chest as she slumped in her seat.

He wasn’t the worst; far from it. She’d known the worst. Sandor was stubborn and rough-around-the-edges, clueless and sarcastic, and so very handsome, confident, and sexy, but also infuriating. Sansa bit her bottom lip to stop it from pouting.

The ruse was up, though. It’d been up from perhaps the day she met him. The downside of this family—secrets didn’t last long. It wasn’t just psychic perceptions and divination. They were like any other close-knit family—everybody in everyone else’s business, intuitive enough to pick up on vibes and feelings, and gossipy enough to want the juice at even the suggestion of an exciting development.

Arya turned to Sansa and narrowed her eyes with a saucy smile.

“You were rubbing up on him!” she shouted. “Mom and I saw.”

Sansa blushed. She could feel it; the kind of blush that came with a blast of heat that meant her skin was blotchy. She melted further into her seat and let her hands disappear into the sleeves of her oversized sweater.

Rickon heckled from the kitchen table with a dramatic gasp and raucous laugh. Bran shut his book, his attention on something far more appealing than family history—the family present where Sansa was about to be grilled. 

She’d concede this. Sandor had nice hands—warm skin, calloused in places that meant he actually used them, long and thick fingers. They were also frustratingly resilient to her psychic probing. She only caught glimpses—trauma endured in a hard childhood and inflicted by a family member. He was a strong soul, brave and not unkind but skeptical and hardened.

There was the ethics of seeing without someone’s permission, though. Closer than they’d ever been, she instead had focused on the little details of him—the way stubble peppered his chin in such an alluring way; the flecks of green in steel gray eyes; nicely arched and full brows that paired well with the intensity of his gaze; lips that looked soft and delicious, worthy of so many kisses.

Of course, there were his scars too. He’d let her look. From afar, they didn’t look bad. Up close, she could see the damage, but they suited him and didn’t detract from his appeal.

Another psychic impression she’d picked up on—his self-deprecation and sarcasm were a means to poke fun at his scars and perceived short-comings before others could. The instinct had stuck, though, forged into his personality and eventually he’d grown his confidence despite them. Beyond that, she had picked up little.

Sandor had unknowingly sent up a shield even in the etheric realms, a means of self-protection. Sansa couldn’t “see” beyond it; not until today, but that had come at a cost—a fully-immersive vision like she’d never known, and he’d been there to see it. No one else knew. During family dinner, Sansa had left out that bit when she relayed her run-in with Sandor. Ever the perceptive woman, her mother had looked at Sansa as if she sensed the omission.

“I was showing him the product,” Sansa explained with a nonplussed shrug. “He has nice hands.”

_Whoops._ She’d only meant to think that; not say it out loud.

Rickon howled with laughter. Bran’s mouth hung agape as he beamed with delight and high-fived his brother. Her mother looked on knowingly, lips sealed shut because her expression said it all.

“Excuse me, what?” Arya demanded, as displeased with this development as the others were pleased.

“Big. He has big hands.”

Oh well. She was already down this path and it was true. There was nothing wrong with objectively making observations. They were big hands and there was nothing to read into.

“Gross!” Rickon snickered, and all but abandoned the herbs now.

“You like him,” Bran placidly commented, because if anyone was adept at making observations in this family, it was him and they were usually spot on.

Sansa feebly warded off the inquisition. “No, I don’t.”

“Well, it seems convenient that you just _happened_ to run into him at the library,” Arya remarked, yet another accusation but this one entirely unfounded. The run-in was sheer coincidence. “Why were you there, anyway?”

“I wanted to see if they had a copy of daddy’s book. Mine apparently grew legs and walked off my bookshelf.”

Sansa hadn’t cracked open that book in years and couldn’t quite explain the sudden urge to now. Her father—bless his departed soul—had been a great many things. Brief and to-the-point were not among them. No one in the family really knew what bug crawled up his ass and inspired him to write a _War and Peace_ -length book about Stark Fall. He wasn’t a writer, and the desire had struck him out-of-the-blue.

He’d touted it as a history book, but a bizarre and off-topic theme ran through it; chapters about how their mother the River Witch had landed in Stark Fall from New Orleans, advice for easing non-believers into the mystical mix, random selections of magickal tidbits written for a non-magickal audience. Sansa had read parts of it but couldn’t muster the attention span to power through the whole thing.

“Did they have a copy?” her mom asked and, though she wiped down the island, her eyes lifted to Sansa with obvious interest.

Sansa shook her head. “No. They said someone checked it out and had just renewed it.”

Rickon snickered. “No offense to our Pops, but who in their right mind is actually reading that thing?”

“And liking it enough to renew it,” Bran added, a fair point.

It was true. Most of the town already knew the stories in its pages and were wholly uninterested in the other content. The library kept a courtesy copy on its shelves as a gesture of respect, and that copy went untouched for years until now.

“There’s a reason for everything and everything has its reason,” their mother gently intervened and gathered her purse from the kitchen’s built-in sideboard. She kissed Sansa and Arya each on the top of the head. “The boys and I will drop off the stew at the nursing home and then we need to stop and get stuff for Rickon’s school project.”

She paused and pointed to the nearly spent bottle of Bordeaux. “You girls are staying here tonight. I don’t want you driving home.”

Sansa agreed with a nod as October dashed across the kitchen after the papery peel of an onion on the floor.

Arya lifted her wineglass and winked at Sansa. “Yep, toasty Tuesday.”

* * *

After their mother and brothers left, Sansa and Arya mutually decided that it’d be a tremendous travesty to let the rest of the Bordeaux go to waste; a terrible crime against the bottle of wine that had done nothing to deserve being left out with only a quarter of its contents left.

Arya split the rest of it with Sansa and suggested that they retire to the parlor off the main hall. Their mother insisted it was just a formal living room. Plenty of houses had those, but what house also boasted an attic exclusively for drawing a circle, calling the quarters, and casting spells? What normal, everyday people had greenhouses off their kitchens for growing obscure herbs for tinctures, salves, and bath potions? What house had a room for divination—scrying mirrors on the walls, stubby little tables meant for reading tarot cards and tea leaves?

The Victorian was old and had been in the family for centuries. The far corner of the cellar boasted mismatched sandstone collected from the rubble of Cornelius Stark’s first home that’d burned in a fire at the turn of the century. The religious townsfolk of a neighboring village had claimed that God struck it down during a thunderstorm, punishment for the Starks consorting with the Devil.

In truth, it had been an accident. Cornelius’s cat, Radicchio, had batted an oil lamp off the table. Everyone survived the blaze and Radicchio lived to the ripe old age of twenty-one. This house was built atop those stones that still held scorch marks. Rickon claimed Radicchio haunted the house and goaded October into nightly games of chase.

Sansa didn’t know about that. What she knew—the walls groaned with the wind and sometimes without it; the pipes echoed in the middle of the night, as if an invisible hand tapped them; the lights pulsed when Sansa passed beneath them. Every so often, it felt full with the presence of something, though nothing sinister or worthy of fear; just someone or something passing through or keeping watch from beyond. The supernatural was all rather natural.

The lace drapes swayed ever so slightly as Sansa and Arya breezed into the parlor that somehow was both regal and comforting at the same time—plush velvet-upholstered furniture; jeweled sconces that put off subdued light, a gauzy affect like drifting in a dream; walls wrapped in emerald hues and framed in dark wood molding.

Arya lit the candles on the fireplace mantle and a few on the antique coffee table that sat between two sets of winged-back chairs. Sansa curled up on one and circled her finger in a buttoned tuft. The grandfather clock in the corner tick-tocked to the time of her thoughts.

Arya settled in the chair across from her and drew a loose-knit blanket around her shoulders as she sipped her wine. Arya imbibed on the quiet, but eventually gnawed her bottom lip and her brows drew together in that familiar way that meant her mind churned over something. A dog with a bone, Arya would gnaw relentlessly until she reached marrow—a prize for persistence or perhaps stubbornness.

Candlelight fell across Arya’s face and cast strange shadows that danced on the wall behind her. Rain pattered the windows, and the house creaked with the wind.

“The moon is waning,” Arya remarked and a smile slowly worked its way across her wine-stained lips. 

“What?” Sansa pressed. “What are you thinking?”

Arya abandoned her wine on the side table and lowered her voice. “Would it be the worst thing if we encouraged Sandor’s departure from Stark Fall?”

Sansa’s stomach dropped. Goosebumps prickled her skin with a sudden cold blast that she assumed was just a phantom sensation until she noticed the drapes moving too.

“A banishment spell,” Sansa spoke plainly. Her sister nodded.

Sansa sat up. Her head swam with too much wine and not enough water. Banishing was serious business, not for the faint of heart. And it had to be warranted, all other avenues exhausted because, when magick like that backfired, it created a mess that had to be cleaned up. Above all, magick had an unspoken currency. Dark deeds created debt; energetic voids that had to be filled with positive acts to keep the scales balanced.

Sansa wrapped her arms around her chest and her legs coiled around one another. Her foot tapped the floor as she thought it over.

“Arya, those are tricky. If it backfires—”

She already carried the guilt for even suggesting to Sandor that she would banish him. It wasn’t something to throw around, even as an empty threat.

“Okay, fine,” Arya conceded. “But there’s no harm in a binding spell. Just a little something to make sure he stays away from us. Think of it as a protective barrier.”

Bindings were the magickal equivalent of blocking someone on social media. It could be undone, and it didn’t interfere with free will.

But barriers…

Sansa didn’t want barriers. She wanted to clear the path. She wanted the magickal equivalent of bulldozing common ground on which to stand with a man who’d captivated her in ways she hadn’t anticipated. She wanted to grow that path with understanding and acceptance, respect, and appreciation.

Arya slipped from her seat and perched on the arm of Sansa’s chair. 

“He hurt your feelings,” she reminded Sansa and ran her fingers through Sansa’s hair.

“He didn’t…it wasn’t…”

The protest died on Sansa’s tongue. He did hurt her. And it’d stung, yes, but it wasn’t about chakras or crystals.

It was the judgement—the sharp words and incredulous look that meant not only did he not believe, but he perhaps derided those who did. She didn’t need him to believe for her sake, but she needed him to accept her. And that’s what this was really about—acceptance. Sansa was different and not in a vapid _“I’m not like other girls”_ way that was really just a ploy to stand out and draw a clear line in the sand, the “me versus them” divide. The crucial moment for most of her interactions with men all came down to the same confession she had to mutter to know if a relationship could progress.

_“I’m a witch.”_

The confession had been met with many things—sneers, mocking, laughter, confusion, dead silence, and once even anger. Sometimes the knowledge grew on people with time, slow acceptance until they saw what it was really about; not just part-time witchcraft to fulfill some aesthetic, but a whole lineage rife with history, a duty to her craft and to her family, a lifestyle she lived that meant the person she was involved with would have to live it with her and all the oddities that came with it—intense dreams, bumps in the night that had no explanation, visits from departed ancestors, and the psychic interruptions that usually came at inopportune times.

None had made it that far. None had ever tried. Sansa lived in a world of magick and just wanted someone strong, brave, and accepting enough to share it with.

Arya snaked her arm around Sansa’s shoulders and rested her cheek on the top of Sansa’s head.

“You’re my sensitive little marshmallow,” she cooed and delighted in babying her big sister. “If anyone roasts you, I think, as your sister, I’m entitled to put a spell on them. Just a small one.”

Arya twirled a ribbon of Sansa’s hair around her index finger and tossed out the suggestion with as much banality as offering tea or a stroll through the neighborhood.

The campaign of peer pressure continued. With her wine glass in one hand, Arya tugged Sansa up the winding staircase to the attic. On the second floor, she assured no harm was intended. On the third floor, they grabbed the Book of Shadows, black candles, matches, a bowl, and salt. It was just a simple little protection charm, Arya coerced on the narrow staircase to the attic.

Inside, Arya flicked on the light—the single bulb that lit the space that was as empty as it was expansive. The light didn’t reach the far corners where old trunks lined the walls and were filled to the gills with forgotten heirlooms.

The space was all wood beams up above and creaky floorboards below. With gaps between them, the floorboards were wide enough to lose things—spare change, bits of paper, pieces of jewelry. A treasure-trove probably existed beneath their feet, along with dust bunnies and artifacts of all the rituals that took place up here.

“Should we call the quarters?” Sansa asked and took her spot in front of the small altar near the attic window.

She gazed out it at the ink black sky. Clouds rolled across a silver sliver of the moon. Her breath fogged up the glass. Sandor Clegane existed somewhere beneath that same sky and lunar crescent. She wondered how he faired now in the fallout of their interaction—if he was angry, sad, and frustrated too. With her sleeve, Sansa wiped away the fog from the windowpane and sent him from her mind.

“Nah,” Arya replied and set the bowl to the altar. “We’ll keep this quick and dirty.”

Ah yes, quick and dirty spell work. What could possibly go wrong with a sloppily opened circle, and no deities called to the quarters? Sansa buried her qualms and considered this the equivalent to candle magick—the low barrier-to-entry spell work that was more akin to a wish upon a star than it was actual ritual magick.

Oddly, it set Sansa at ease and she placed the Book of Shadows on the altar with self-assurance that this was nothing more than a little enchantment. _Quick and dirty._

Arya thumbed through the book’s pages to the spell for binding. A knot formed in Sansa’s stomach. She hadn’t exhausted all paths. She hadn’t told him how he’d made her feel—childish for believing in magick, much less living it. Surely, he’d be mortified if he knew. He’d already apologized profusely and didn’t mean harm.

“We need something of his,” Arya muttered as she skimmed the page. “A lock of hair.”

She lifted her eyes to Sansa with an expectant gaze.

“Why would I have that?” Sansa laughed and placed the black candle and its brass holder beneath the attic’s single light and what would be the center of the ritual circle.

“I don’t know! You liked his hands so much, I just assumed you’d like his hair too.” Arya hopped to her feet and scurried across the room. “Be right back!” she hollered and barreled down the stairs. 

Fair point. Sansa did like his hair—jet black and it looked soft, touchable, hair she could run her fingers through, and it’d feel like silk against her skin. Maybe even between her thighs. _Stop that._

Sansa shook her head to dislodge the inconvenient thought. She could fantasize about him later. Arya bolted back into the room with a handful of ballpoint pens and proudly held them out to Sansa.

“Here!” Arya’s cheeks flushed rosy red, and she beamed at Sansa who plucked a pen from the bunch.

She recognized these pens—a blue stick with yellow lettering reading “Stark Fall Police Department” and boasting a teddy bear. They’d populated Sandor’s table at the Founders Festival.

Sansa gaped at the fistfuls of pens. “Oh my God! Did you take all of them?”

“You bet your ass I did!” Arya declared and shoved the handfuls towards Sansa’s face. “Look, they’ve got teddy bears on them. How lame is that? I bet Sandor picked that. God, he probably sleeps with a teddy bear too. What a loser!”

Arya scampered to the middle of the room and dropped the pens to the floor.

Sansa stared at the pen in her hand. A faint smile forced its way across her lips. “No, he doesn’t.”

Sansa entertained sweet visions of Sandor in his bed—his shirtless chest rising and falling with sleep and his bedroom very notably devoid of teddy bears.

“You gonna find out?” Arya teased and lifted a brow at Sansa.

Was it that obvious? She swallowed hard and gave a weak shake of the head. The mere suggestion sent her thoughts right back to shirtless Sandor in bed, but now Sansa envisioned herself in the space by his side and peeling back the sheet to reveal what was underneath. Naked. He probably slept naked.

“Okay, so we need to burn these,” Arya announced and knelt on the floor where at least a dozen pens laid scattered.

“Under no circumstances are we burning these!”

That’d go over well—her mother turning up to the house ablaze. The cause of the fire? A molten mass of twelve teddy bear pens. Sansa held up her finger.

“Hold on a second. I’ve got an idea.”

She rushed from the attic, down the staircase to the second floor, and into her childhood bedroom. She dug into her purse where Sandor’s business card assumed a sacred space in a zipper pocket. Sansa paused and stared at the card in her hands.

_What am I doing?_

Even the sight of his printed name invited in butterflies; that delicious flush of excitement at the details of him like a New York area code in front of his cellphone number or the “U.” between his first name and last name that sheltered the mystery of his middle name. Then there was his title, Detective, and all the questions that called up—how he got into the profession? Did he like it? Was it dangerous? Why did he come here? If she sent him away, Sansa would never know the answers to any of these questions.

The thought saddened her. Maybe it shouldn’t have. She waffled between hurt, anger, longing, and desire. The mishmash of emotions left her dizzied and dazed.

“What are you doing?” Arya called from the attic.

“Coming!” Sansa hollered, but hesitated with his card in her hands.

Could she part with it? She had his number saved in her phone. That’s all that really mattered. If the spell worked, it wasn’t as if she’d need his number. Just like that, she was back to waffling, teetering dangerously close to calling the whole thing off.

_“You really believe in all this hocus pocus?”_

Oh, but there it was again; the line heard ‘round the world (or at least Stark Fall) and the one buried so deep in her heart, Sansa hadn’t managed to dig it out just yet.

That settled it. She hurried back up the stairs and into the attic.

“Here.” Sansa handed the card off to Arya. “Write his name and the intention on the back of it with the pen. That should do it.”

Arya plopped to the floor and, with the pen cap between her teeth, wrote Sandor’s name. Sansa grabbed the bowl and salt and brought them to the center of the room. With a sprinkle of salt, she cast a circle and focused on protection, a vivid white light sealing the perimeter with her, Arya, and their ritual materials at the center.

When she was finished, Sansa joined Arya on the floor. Her sister handed off the card and recapped the pen.

Sansa glanced at Arya’s scribbles and stifled a laugh.

_‘Sandur Clegain. Fuck off.’_

“You misspelled it,” she giggled.

Arya’s face flattened. “I did?” She snatched the card from Sansa.

Bright laughter poured from Arya and she shrugged as she tossed the card into the large ceramic bowl between them. 

“Eh, close enough. I’m sure there isn’t a Sandur Clegain in town and the magickal powers that be are like Santa Claus.”

Sansa stared at her sister and felt her brow crinkle. She usually could pick up what Arya put down, no matter how bizarre, but this was a new one.

“What?”

“They know where to find you,” Arya explained. “They see you when you’re sleeping. They know when you’re awake. The whole deal.”

Sansa nodded, distracted as her eyes landed on the Book of Shadows still sitting open on the altar and not in the salt circle that hummed with pressure, the energy at its peak.

“You remembered your wine, but forgot the book,” Sansa sighed and stared at Arya’s wine glass blessedly protected in the circle. 

Arya responded with an innocent shrug. Apparently, they’d have to wing this.

Sansa grabbed the pen and scanned the circle. “I need something to write on.” 

Arya held out her hand. “Here.”

It’d have to do, and it probably would have if Arya’s palm wasn’t slick with sweat. Sansa managed the best she could with smudged letters and a short incantation that was deliberately less severe than the one in the book.

Arya hummed _“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”_ as Sansa wrote out the last line of the spell.

“Okay, we have to focus,” Sansa chided. “No Christmas songs. Just focus and intention.”

She lit the black candle and drew several deep breaths. Arya did the same as they both closed their eyes. The room took on a familiar presence. Sansa never knew what it was; something _other_ , not of this world and not apart either; truly neutral and liminal. Beyond the attic, a door groaned on its hinges somewhere in the house. Faint raps and taps sounded. This house came alive when magick was afoot. It lost shades of the mundane, and what was left was sublime and mysterious, a whole undercurrent of the mystical that went unnoticed by most.

A soft hum and faint words departed Arya’s lips. “Santa Claus is coming to town,” she sang.

Sansa cracked her eyes open. Arya bit back a smirk, but as soon as their eyes met, they both exploded with wine-fueled laughter. No use in trying to center again. The best course of action was to just get this over with.

With the candle between them, Sansa rested her forearms on her crossed legs. Arya mirrored her and rested her palms face up in Sansa’s. Together, they read the incantation.

“Hecate, we call to thee.

Bind to the flame Sandor Clegane.

Cause no harm but cast this charm.

Hecate, hear our call.”

Arya paused. Her face scrunched up and eyes watered. Her features contorted in obvious discomfort. Her head reared back. Sansa didn’t even get the chance to ask what was wrong. A sneeze escaped Arya with enough force that it snuffed out the candle and sprayed Sansa.

“Oops.” Arya broke with more laughter until tears pearled in her eyes and she heaved for a breath.

“Ew!” Sansa wiped the droplets from her cheek and relit the candle. “Okay, let’s try this again.”

Together, they read the words.

“Hecate, we call to thee.

Bind to the flame Sandor Clegane.

Cause no harm but cast this charm.

Hecate, hear our call.

Hold him to the threefold law.

Our will is done, let him hurt none.

We call to thee.

So it is, so mote it be.” 

No sooner had they spoken the words, a black flash zipped across the room and sprinted into the circle. In one mad dash, October toppled Arya’s wine glass, swatted at the pens and sent a few between the gap in the floorboards, and darted out of the attic as chaotically as he’d entered, all while meowing triumphantly.

Sansa hurried to sop up the wine before it too seeped through the floorboards. Arya snatched up Sandor’s business card and tossed it in the puddle of wine with virtually no effect other than sending them both into side-stitching laughter.

“Sandur Clegain is washing away!” Sansa shrieked and rescued the card from the ruby red puddle. It was too late. The ink bled like black tears and the thing was thoroughly saturated as she tossed it into the bowl a soggy mess. “This is the jankiest spell.”

“No! It’s gonna be fine!” Arya shouted with all her dogged and slightly tipsy determination behind it and lit a match. “Okay, let’s light this thing on fire.”

Arya dropped the match. It should’ve been a slow, controlled burn. It should _not_ have engulfed the entire bowl in flames. And it certainly should not have sent a smoldering ember of business card flying to the puddle of wine that then also erupted into flames.

“Oh my fuck!” Arya screamed. “Stop, drop, and roll.” Arya rolled out of the circle and across the floor, clear to the other side of the room.

“It’s on fire! It’s on fire!” Sansa sprung to her feet, jumping up and down and screaming the obvious. Her eyes darted about the room, but some strange reflex bid her to kick over the bowl that snuffed out the open flame.

Crisis averted, Sansa gulped down breaths and carefully blew out the candle. The relief was short-lived. Foot falls quickly ascended the attic steps and their mother appeared in the doorway, her face pale and drawn with worry.

“What are you girls doing?”

She scanned the room, evaluating what she saw. The magickal accoutrements gave them away. To make matters worse, the vestiges of ritual still hung in the air like a dense fog.

Sansa glanced at Arya. She still laid on her stomach, but now swung her legs and nonchalantly twirled her hair.

“Nothing,” she replied with a shrug. “Chillin’.”

Their mom looked unimpressed and unconvinced. She crossed her arms and gave that look that only mothers could give—a slight head tilt, the echo of disappointment surfacing in her eyes, and a whole lot of dubiousness written all over her face.

“It’s a waning moon. Tuesday. A salt circle. A black candle.” She fired off her observations and would’ve kept going, but the picture she painted was clear for anyone to see; at least, anyone familiar with their world where colors all had meaning and so too did the planetary influences on the days of the week. “We don’t do retaliatory magick in this house, and I didn’t raise you to do sloppy spells.”

Arya pushed herself from the floor and padded up to Sansa’s side.

“We’re just keeping the dicks at bay,” Arya explained. “Everybody wants that, right? Who wants a big dick swinging around?” She wrapped her arm around Sansa’s lower back and squeezed. “Right, sis? No massive cocks?”

Their mother rolled her eyes and pointed to the mess on the floor, the absolute chaos of the shitshow that was this spell.

“Clean up and then cleanse this space. I want you both to sleep with black tourmaline under your pillow tonight.”

The High Priestess had spoken with all the authority given to her as the Master Witch, but even she must’ve found some humor in it. Their mother turned away with the ghost of a smile before leaving Sansa and Arya to clean up the attic and rid it of the bizarre residual energy that hung around from slipshod magick. Harmless now, it could gather in forgotten corners and turn mischievous over time, a disruptive nuisance that’d be harder to deal with later.

With the attic cleaned of the mess and cleared of renegade energies, Sansa turned in to her childhood bedroom where the walls were still painted a dusky pink and pictures of her teenage years lined the vanity mirror. The memories they contained were largely sweet, though many of those friends had moved away; off to see the world outside the sleepy little town they’d grown up in and grew out of. Some came back. Most didn’t and were lost to time and distance, but that was a token of adulthood.

Sansa burrowed beneath the down comforter that guarded against leaky windows and drafty walls. The tip of her nose held the chill, and she listened to the wind howl outside. The branches of the tall oaks that surrounded the house scratched against the roof. Sleep didn’t come easy. In fact, for many hours, it didn’t come at all, not even a suggestion of it.

Wide-awake, Sansa thought about the moon now serenely placed in a settled sky and Sandor Clegane slumbering beneath it. Or perhaps he laid awake too and thought of her. And what did he think of? Did he regret how things turned out between them? Did he wonder what could’ve been? And was he truly sorry—enough to accept her as she was and respect even the things he couldn’t believe in for himself?

Sansa closed her eyes and thought she might catch stray impressions he sent off. Nothing came, though. Just a blank space in her mind’s eye, peacefully dark and still a question mark.

When she did finally fall asleep, Sansa’s dreams conjured surreal images of technicolor landscapes drenched in vibrant light and Sandor Clegane amongst it all. The strange medley of images started in a forest of red-canopied trees where they hiked to a hill crest and Bruce Springsteen, of all people, sent them off on a hot-air balloon towards a sky of patchwork colors, all sateen with supple sheen and great big scoops of sherbet-colored clouds. In her dreams, Sansa didn’t have to wonder what Sandor Clegane thought of. In her dreams, he told her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My love for the movie "Practical Magic" is showing here! I not only adored the sister dynamic in that movie, but the house in that movie was certainly inspirational for writing about the Stark house in this chapter. I'm also excited to introduce more Starks into this story, including October the chaos kitty! 
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading and for the love and support for this story! I appreciate it beyond words and I truly hope you all are enjoying! 💜

**Author's Note:**

> [ Check out the Spellbound playlist on Spotify!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4m9NSxIauIQ2DfdGSeJEnq?si=pK5d_YgpRRyqLzozgVYuwA)


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